So recap…. Now it’s me, Ray, Austin, and our two daughters Faye and Erin, but we didn’t start seeing Erin on a regular basis until the girls were two. Life wasn’t easy, but we found joy every day. Austin and Faye kept me busy, and Ray worked his butt off for a wood flooring company. We still lived in that little trailer house on the south edge of town on five acres. Ray had shown up with his dresser and a couple of suitcases when I was seven months pregnant with Faye, and we had officially become a little family. She was born on December 20th, our little Christmas miracle. We’d been home from the hospital for a couple of days and Ray asked me what I wanted more than anything for Christmas. I immediately knew where he was going with that, but I was a deer in the headlights. It felt too soon to entertain the thought of marriage when there was so much to still learn about each other. Erin hadn’t even been born yet and that felt very daunting to me as well. So I said the only thing I could think of at the time and that was for him to get Austin a Nintendo DS for Christmas. I hated the look of disappointment on his face, knowing that I’d hurt him, but he never said a word about it. Instead, he went out and bought that Nintendo DS. We had our first Christmas as a family and overall it felt as if things were finally falling into place. Ray’s dad bought Faye an overstuffed Clifford the big red dog just from him and at the time I thought that was the sweetest gesture, like we’d been accepted into the fold. Shortly after, Erin came along and we were reeling from going from one kid to three in the span of not much more than a year together. It was a whirlwind at the very least. Add to that, trying to get to really know each other like most couples do before dealing with family, finances, etc. Then with our families thrown into the mix, it felt even more chaotic, but exciting too.
Right from the start there were clear differences in the ways we were brought up. His family seemed perfect, the true picture of stability. His dad was the provider, his mother the epitome of what a homemaker should look like, and two beautiful sisters. They seemed to be tight-knit, as was my family, but in a different way. It was YEARS before I began to figure out that there is no such thing as perfect unless you’re Jesus, and clearly none of us are. I thought this was my new family and we would live out our days as such. In turn, my family accepted Ray and welcomed him with open arms. We on the other hand aren’t perfect, but something much better instead, we’re REAL. We’re messy, we’re loud, there are stepparents, divorces, tons of kids, chaos, and most of all, a ferocious love that we have for each other. I’m now ashamed of the ways I compared the two back then. They were “perfect”, we were crazy…..
Trying to live up to the expectations I’d put on myself was sometimes exhausting. All I wanted was to please everyone. The kids, Ray, his parents, mine, and our extended families, maintaining my friendships and social life, all of that took precedence over me. What stands out to me the most as I revisit who I thought I should’ve been back then, is who was not on my list of priorities….. God. Also undoubtedly how things got progressively more tumultuous.
I’ve always displayed classic OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) symptoms (self-diagnosed I might add). Quirky things that make me “twitch” if not done a certain way. The way towels are folded and put away, the way the dishwasher is loaded, the way toilet paper is arranged, the appearance of my children when I’d get them ready to go somewhere, and the way our home looked at any given time. These are things that would keep me awake at night if I tried to go to bed before habitually checking them off my mental to-do list. Looking back I see now that my condition heightened while comparing myself to what others were doing and feeling as if my ways weren’t good enough. I noticed little things when we’d visit Ray’s parents that I assumed were expected of me to reach that “perfect” appearance that they seemed to achieve effortlessly. There was plenty to learn from his mother, she was “old school”, with remedies for housekeeping and child-rearing that seemed really smart and helpful, but at times had me scratching my head because I’d been taught the opposite of a lot of them. Oh to have had the wisdom then that I have now when it comes to running a household and raising a family, some of it adopted from things she shared with me, and a large majority of things I wish so badly I’d listened to my instinct about. Instincts are God’s gift to us to help us navigate our way through life. There’s a reason your stomach rolls over in your gut when something feels off, it’s because IT IS and God is trying to tell you that!
So fast forward a few months…. We’ve established the trajectory of our relationship, we’re raising our family, we’re progressing. It’s 2003, and Austin is in fourth grade, he plays baseball with the same boys he’s been playing with since T-ball as five-year-olds, he’s rambunctious and wild, keeping me on my toes for sure. Faye is a little angel, she’s smart, she’s sweet, she’s beautiful, and has us all wrapped around her little finger. There’s something about sharing children and the joy they bring you that’s hard to describe if you’ve never done it yourself. This was the first time I’d experienced it myself since my first time with Austin was just he and I for the most part. All of it overwhelmed me in all the best ways and had me head over heels in love with Ray as a result. I loved the way it made me feel when Faye would do something to make us both laugh and I’d look up to see that he was looking at me, sharing in my joy and the love that came with it too. Our chemistry only intensified as our love for each other grew and I finally started to feel like this was who I was meant to spend the rest of my life with.
We went on a ski trip in February of 2004 with Ray’s two sisters, their husbands, and his niece and nephew whom I’d come to adore as I’d started babysitting them during the summers while their parents were at work. Our girls had just turned one. We’d arranged for Faye to spend the first couple of days with Ray’s mother and then my mom and sister had volunteered to keep her until we got home. We’d never spent time away from her like that, but trusted that our families had it under control. On the second day when I called to check in on her, Ray’s mom, sounding a little stressed let me know that Faye was running a fever, snotty, and throwing up. She said she’d been giving her milk and juice and she couldn’t keep anything down. This confused me because when Austin was a baby, we had lots of bouts of illness that were upper respiratory-related and the first thing they told me to stop giving him was milk. I tried to explain this to her, but she was set in her ways and ignored me. It was so hard to be 10+ hours away and helpless to what was happening to my baby. By the next day, she was even worse and my mom and sister took matters into their own hands and went to pick her up. My sister said when she went to the door, my mother-in-law answered with Faye on her hip, both of them looking ragged and my poor baby crying hysterically. They got her to my parent’s house and got some Pedialyte in her and she started to get better almost immediately. She had her bubba Austin there with her too and all was well by the time we got to them. I know that seems like a pointless story to add here but believe me when I tell you there’s a point. As a crime story narrator would say, I’m building a pattern.
While on the ski trip I was feeling nauseous myself. One morning after we’d eaten a hearty breakfast before hitting the slopes, we’d no more than gotten in the truck than I was asking Ray to pull over. He looked at me as if I was crazy, but complied. I promptly ran behind a nearby snowdrift at the edge of the parking lot and purged the huge breakfast I’d just eaten. I knew in the pit of my stomach what was happening, but kept it to myself for the time being. Once we were back home and in reality, I decided to do what I couldn’t put off any longer and take a pregnancy test. I took it while Ray was at work and when it came back with the little + sign, I left it on the shelf above the toilet and didn’t say a word. I was beside myself, we were idiots. We’d just had TWO babies, in the last year and now number three was on the way. What was Ray going to say? How would we afford this? I’d be lying if I said he was thrilled, and that broke my heart. As much progress as we’d made in our relationship and life in general, I never doubted that we’d be okay at the end of the day. Again that was the Holy Spirit at work in me, filling me with hope that Ray lacked because he didn’t know HIM, like I did. Even though I wasn’t living a Christian lifestyle, I was raised a believer and never doubted my faith. Ray had been baptized, but his dad was a self-proclaimed nonbeliever back then and his mother claimed to be a Jehovah’s Witness because there were some Jehovah’s Witnesses who came to her house once a week to pray with her and gave her a copy of their bible. So Christianity wasn’t practiced in their home and the absence of hope, although unnoticed by me back then, is so clear now. The poor man was scared to death because being the practical thinker that he is, was wondering how on earth we were going to support all these kids. In spite of the doubt or worry that ensued in the next few days, we made it. I knew almost immediately that the baby I was carrying was a boy. I knew with all three of my kids what sex they were (that I birthed) before any of them were ever confirmed by ultrasound. I told Ray as much, but I think he secretly thought he was destined to have all girls. Sure enough the day of the ultrasound, the tech asked if we wanted to know the sex and I told him I already knew it was a boy, to which he replied, “You’re right”! I looked over at Ray in that moment and saw the pride showing through the smile that was beaming across his face. It was a rollercoaster after that. This little fireball that was growing inside me was as strong as a bull, none of my other pregnancies had been so intense. They were all distinct in their own ways, Austin was big and had me feeling a nervous energy the whole time. With Faye, I was inexplicably calm amidst the storm that was our lives during that time. But this baby, he was strong, I could feel the strength as if it were fueling me. He came early, just three weeks, but early enough that his lungs weren’t fully developed and he had to spend the first week in the NICU. He left the hospital a whopping 5 lbs.1oz., tiny, but always fierce. He remains that way to this day, he gets that from my side. An old friend once referred to us all as rabid chihuahuas, and we had to admit that it was fitting. But don’t discount us, because, like David in the Bible, his size was irrelevant. He took out a whole giant named Goliath with nothing but a slingshot and a rock. When you have God’s favor backing you, nothing can stop you. But they’ll try, they did with us and here we are, not only healing, but thriving.
Exodus 9:16 NIV But I have raised you up for this very purpose, that I might show you my power and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.
