I’m A Second-Shift Widow [UPDATED AUGUST 27]

If you’ve ever heard of a Football Widow, you know what the title means. (If not, an example is below)

I’m not a real widow – I have a husband, but only on weekends. My husband works a second-shift job and I work a typical 8-5 job which means we see each other unconscious more than awake.

So what does this look like?

• A second-shift widow (like myself) doesn’t serve dinner every night – or cook.
• She can leave the dishes for the morning if she wants to.
• She doesn’t go to bed with a kiss goodnight.
• She has the bathroom to herself in the morning.
• She doesn’t fall asleep to someone breathing.
• She’s always up for girl nights.

Living an opposite schedule from your spouse has its ups and its downs. You’re so close and yet so apart. You don’t have to do all the chores, but you’re still cleaning up after two. Being married to a ghost 5/7th of the week is a strange feeling and an even stranger marriage.

Today I read this great blog post by a good friend, Maggie Johnson, about marriage in the moments between the life-defining highs and the dreaded lows. If you haven’t read it, go read it now (no, really, go!) because what she said is absolutely true. What she says is what I’ve been trying to cultivate in our marriage since it started – intentional time and unintended time are equally needed in marriage. Spouses that work different shifts, however, have an added challenge in cramming everything it needs to be into a finite amount of time.

My temporary solution to working different shifts has been for me to cut short sleep in exchange for 15 or 20 minutes after he gets home (like right now). That doesn’t happen every night, and cutting out sleep certainly influences other parts of life. It’s stressful and hard and I hate it.

I would not wish this marriage on anyone else.

Our time together is limited by jobs and when it does happen, it’s filled with necessities: setting the budget, family events, laundry. These things are good and build us up in other ways, but rarely is it intimate or completely fulfilling. Most of the time, alone or together, I have this yearning to just sit next to each other and be.

Imagine telling your husband this: “Stop whatever you’re doing or planning to do and just be with me.”

(Hint: It doesn’t go over well.)

So we find other ways of fulfilling that intimacy without feeling suffocated. We play board games while discussing books. We bounce new ideas off each other while surfing the internet. We talk about the trips we’ll take while we sip cocktails and beer. We fold laundry and dream of the future. We disagree about who will load the dishwasher while we eat ice cream. We text cool things we’ve found to each other while we’re on our lunch breaks or at home. We Facebook message important things for the other to read when they wake up. We argue about which show to watch or who gets to play the video game first…okay, so it’s not all roses and lilacs – there are thorns and weeds too.

We put a lot of time and energy and love and sacrifice in our Marriage Box to make this thing work. I came across the idea of the Marriage Box earlier this year and it’s been percolating in my head ever since. (If you know the source, please tell me – I searched and searched to no avail.)

It’s just so true, and not just for marriage. This is how friendships and family and church and work and marriage all work – you put in more than you take out…or else you’re with an empty box.

UPDATE 8/27: I just got a voicemail from my husband. Less than 24 hours after I posted this blog, he was notified that his shift will be reverting to a first-shift. It’s effective tomorrow.

Words fail me right now. The only thing I can do is sing in my heart and praise with my tongue.

I don’t want to forget the nights like tonight – coming home to a dark house, eating alone, pining, making busy work – but I’m ready to move past them and into that restored relationship, that community that I crave. It’s been a tough three months (June-August) back as a second-shift widow, but I’m looking forward to the next chapter as we continue to build this thing called marriage.

One thing I know for certain: I never take these moments, this mountaintop or the valley we’ve just been through for granted. Every day is a chance to put a little more into the Marriage Box and grow closer to God and each other as we do so.

I hate rollercoasters

The past month or so, I’ve been on an emotional rollercoaster with an unexpected 180 turn from contentment to anxiety, cresting to exhilaration and plunging back into despair, and bouncing around the emotional spectrum at breakneck speed.

This rollercoaster ride culminated in a long conversation with my husband last night as I brought up being torn between academia and motherhood. To be fair, neither are in the immediate future, but I know I want them both. I know a great many strong, capable women that have managed both at the same time – my mother, my professors, my friends – but I know my limits. I’m not strong enough to juggle both roles of a teacher/life-time student and mother at the same time without cracking.

I highly value David’s insight into me and what makes me tick or break. (That saying that you know someone better than they know themselves is oh-so-true in our marriage.)

I also know what I want, those big dreams I’ve carried for so long. I want to be a book editor. I want to travel the world. I want to own a restaurant. I want to publish a book. I want to be a mother. I want to be out of debt. I want to plan weddings. I want to…do it all.

And this is where my limitations conflict with my dreams. I could try to do all those things (because I know people who have and who tell me I can), and I would fail miserably.

So we talked it out. I expressed what I felt and how I couldn’t reconcile all these dreams together. He helped me realize that an online degree wouldn’t fulfill my need for academic exploration, and that I wasn’t really cut out for a tenure-track professorship career either. Talking about our future helped me to realize which of those dreams others were suggesting to me and which dreams I really wanted for me.

And then, being the planner that I am, we had to address how we were going to get from Point A to those dreams.

We didn’t plan down to the last detail. I didn’t write any of it down. It’s not a strict 10-year plan. But we did address some issues including my feelings of being all over the place and I feel more at peace about our lives.

I’ve been able to look back at the path I’ve been on for years and point out all the things that I felt but had not spoken, and once I laid them out, they weren’t so scary any more. In fact, we were able to agree on a few major milestones and laugh at the sillier suggestions.

The future feels less like a rollercoaster and more like an Indiana roadtrip – mostly flat with a few interesting things along the way with really good company and a lot of laughs.

And for today, that’s enough.

There’s a lesson I learned in college and it can be distilled to this: I can make plans, but it is God who decides what happens in my life. I can rest in having a direction and an idea of what I want in life, but I also need to be ready for God to change my plans into his (infinitely better) plans for our lives. And that is where I am once again – heading in a specific, concrete direction while I wait for God to direct our future.

The After-Burn: A Lesson in Shame and Victim Mentality

Image copyright the BBC

Never has the desire for time travel been so strong as it was two weeks ago.

***Below is a detailed description of my recent injury. If you do not feel comfortable reading, I completely understand – just skip to the next image.

I was cleaning my kitchen, putting away food, and decided to tackle the simmering chicken broth in my crockpot instead of leaving it until morning. I drained it, leaving out all the chicken bones and poured the healthy, delicious broth into a container and put the lid on. The lid didn’t feel tight enough so I pushed on it to get more air out, or something equality idiotic. The lid gave way, followed by my fist and arm. I displaced about half of the broth all over my kitchen.

(The kitchen was in better shape than I was.)

A trip to the ER, two follow-up appointments, and ten days later, the resulting first- and second-degree burns almost to my elbow are beginning to heal, in a very painful way.

Image copyright Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer/Getty Images

That’s enough to make me want time travel.

Or at least a fast-forward button.

Some days are easier than others. Work is a struggle when you type all day with a hand injury – my dad can testify to this as well with his own adventures (that’s a story for another time). Typing was difficult at best, but I’m pretty good at the one-handed typing thing and I can use a mouse pretty handily with my non-dominant hand too.

The hardest part is the self-esteem bubble bursting.

This whole situation is my own fault. Whether or not it was a bad set of conditions or just a dumb accident, I don’t have anyone to blame but me for what happened.

But there’s a difference between accepting blame and wallowing in shame.

So here’s the lesson I’ve had to learn the past few weeks…all over again. Shame is natural, but it’s not there to breathe it in and hide in it like it’s your favorite cubbie hole.

This is what happens when you live in shame and let it define you:

You become a person that can’t see the light of day that so bright it’s blinding you. Instead, you have a glimpse of a cloud and it shuts down your day. One thought about how you could have done something else to avoid these feelings and you fall into a never-ending pit of despair – at the drop of a hat. You live under a rock, in a hole, behind the curtain, and shut out any hope of ever being “you” again. Shame tells you you’re worthless and stupid and can’t do anything right. It tells you you’re wrong to feel happy. Shame makes you feel dirty, hopeless, and alone. It makes you feel like there is no way out of its grasp and you’ll never be able to move past it.

To all of those emotions running through your head and those that are settling into your heart, I say: me too.

So let’s do something about it.

Reach out to someone – a family member, a friend, a pastor or caregiver, or even me. Chances are they’ve been through something similar, even if it’s nothing like what you’re going through, and just talking it out with a listening ear will help you move from shame into owning your pain and growing because of it.

If you want to talk about what you’re going through, you can find me on Twitter, Facebook, or email.

So You Think I’m Normal

One of my darling friends said the strangest thing to me a few days ago.

“But you’re so normal!”

She was referring to how well-adjusted I look compared with the soap-opera life I’ve had the last decade or so.

I was flabbergasted at her statement. I don’t see myself as normal, well-adjusted, or even on my way to those things. I laughed when she said that.

I’m far from normal.

I’m prone to a victim mentality, depression, anxiety and panic attacks, and melodrama. I have bouts where I feel like I’m hiding my journey in order to minimize the appearance of being a drama queen.

But I’m done hiding.

That thing you see, that thing that makes me look normal?

That’s not me.

That’s Christ’s overwhelming, all-powerful work in me.

If you could see the broken person I used to be – the person I still am – you would shake your head in amazement. If you had told me I would look, feel, and be as normal as I do today, I would have laughed at you then too.

This isn’t a mask or hiding or pretending.

It’s the Almighty God changing me from who I was into a Christ follower.

It didn’t happen overnight, and it certainly won’t end any time soon, but it’s often just one step in front of another – one prayer after another.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference.

-The Serenity Prayer