I'm Not Cut Out for This

I am not good at being a work outside the home woman, let me count the ways...

  #1-I do not like, what I am told I'm good at...customer service.

  #2-I have 5 people at home who I really like to take care of.

  #3-I love doing things at my house, though I don't always like it in the moment.

  #4-I want to sleep in my own bed all night next to my husband.

  #5-I cannot keep my house clean and organized when I am working all night and sleeping during the day.  

  #6-Husbands are not wives.  Daddies are not mommies.

  #7-Men cannot feed a nursing baby, sorry it's not gonna happen.

  #8-I do not like to pump.  I'm not lazy it just hurts no matter how many kids you have.

  #9-My husband wants to be the breadwinner, and I am very happy about that.

  #10-I need to have a set schedule, but employers don't do that anymore I guess. My schedule changes weekly.

  I am a housewife first.  I am proud of the skills that I have learned "on the job".  I am not Martha Stewart.  I did not grow up in a home where my mother was able to be at home.  My husband asked me when we got married if I would stay home and I agreed, but we have entered a new season.  I am now a working woman, outside the home too.

                                            I used to have this on the wall of home in Oklahoma....

  Certain people in our country have this idea that the only way to be successful is to go to college.  Use your degree.  Get married to another degree holding individual, and make future degree-holding adult people,  and until that time we send these little people to a day care and, or public elementary and high school full of degree-holding, and using, adult people. Thus a cycle is made.  While I don't look down on education, I ask you, is their another way?  Can it be just as important and just as fulfilling?

  When I was training for my current job I was doing a ride along with a woman I work with.  We started talking about ourselves and our lives, and my previous experience as a homemaker came up.  I mentioned my husband's request at the onset of our marriage and she instantly asked me if that was what I had really wanted.  She seemed to even detest the idea by her tone.  But, she had been working at this job for 8 years, she was happy where she was.  She was "making something" of herself.  This wasn't the first time that my former role in our home had rubbed someone wrong, but it made me even more sad now that I was in a position I didn't like to be in, born out of a need to take care of our family.

  God knows where my heart is.  He knows where my husband's heart is.  I believe that he gave us these desires, even the desire to be a working woman in others.  But, I think that we have done our culture a disservice.  We have taken a valuable role and cheapened it until it is now almost as bad as doing no work at all.  

  My children get it.  I do not coach them, or make a big deal about people who have jobs outside the home.  But, when my 5 and 3 year old beg their mommy to stay home and not go back to work, how can you not see the value in the homemaker?  They have one of us, my husband or myself, home with them at all times, but they want me there ALL the time.  They remember.

  I admitted to my husband that I too was consumed with this idea that I wasn't contributing to our family by staying home with our kids.  That I was too busy being lonely, and angry, and unsatified with my abilities, to see what my impact actually was.  I was never meant to do it all every day.  We lived over a thousand miles from both of our families and friends were busy, or moved away at the whim of the military.  But, I was doing what I had always dreamed of, taking care of my family.  Now, I would give anything to be there again.

  Stay at home momma...you are important.  You are fulfilling an important role in your family and your community.  You are not unmotivated, or a sponge, you are training up a future generation and taking care of your husband.

  Working woman, working momma...you are important.  You are fulfilling an important role too.  

  Each of  us has been given different skills and desires.  We are not all meant for the same experiences or careers.  We are different branches of the same tree, and that is ok.

Love God, Love your husband, Love your family,

Nicole

When your husband has a disability

  We always knew that my husband had some quirks, but at the age of 29 he has been diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum. Obviously he is very high functioning, as he spent 8 years in the military and nobody caught on to this, until he got out. So, here I am wondering how I can help my husband.

   He has some things to work through from his service, and now he has just been told that he is not in fact "stupid" as he was made to appear, he has a disability. He is going to college and they have a fantastic network of help here in Montana for disabled students, but what is my first move as a wife? What do you do when you find out your husband has a disability?

   Oh, I think it's obvious when it is a physical one, in some cases, but his is mental and psychological. He has had no therapy in his life to help him learn how to do the things that he has struggled with. He has just been coping. How can I help?

  Because he is 29, it is not like when it's your child and you make the therapy appointments and do all the things they say. He literally will have to re-learn things. We have already seen some of the struggles in his first semester of college, when he was un-diagnosed. But, with the medication he has been taking for his military wounds, we have seen vast improvement in his concentration and ability to do his required reading and writing. I know it sounds corny, but I am at the place where I found I just have to love him through it.

   He has to want to start therapy. He has to make and go to the appointments. He has to work things out with disability services at the college. Oh, I remind him to take his medicine because it is important, but it was his choice to take them as well. I think that sometimes we can cross the line between "wifing" and "mothering". We want to help them so much, and sometimes we don't know how, that we begin to boss them around like we do our kids. Our conversations begin taking on a tone that is more demanding of obedience, than loving support.

   We want good things for them, I get it, but I draw a line at mothering my husband. He is the head of our family, even if he has a disability. I am still his wife. We will get through this together, but there are choices that he has to make. I choose to love him, encourage him, and pray for him.

   I was given a verse to pray over my husband before we found out about his ASD, and I now believe that it was straight from the Holy Spirit. 2 Timothy 1:7- For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. (KJV)

   My own prayer for my husband is that God would give him the strength to see this season through. That he would see this a shaping of his heart and mind, and a very positive growing time, and not as the end to his dreams and future. That he would feel the love of our family, and seek God in making decisions for us. God made him the way he is for a reason, and though we don't know it all yet, we trust that He works all things together for good(Romans 8:28).

  Dear wife of a disabled husband. I see, and feel the struggle to control this situation. But, you can't. Step back and let your husband lead. He may need your help, and he will ask for it, but right now he just needs you to love him the most. To treat him like the man you married, and not someone who is sick or to "mother" him. Praise him for making the hard decisions he will have to make, and stand by him if he chooses not to do certain things. Pray for him. These are all ways you can help.

 Love God, Love your husband, Love your family,

Nicole