When I Grow Up

Before we move on, it’s important to me that you understand that this post was difficult to write. Pieces of me are exposed in the body of this post. Pieces that are normally very private because I have a fear that by sharing some parts of my childhood, it will come across as a cry for sympathy. There is nothing that would affect me more. My personal standard demands that I never use my past as an excuse for mistakes I make in the future. My life is my own. My own to live, to destroy, or to build up. My choices are mine to make. I refuse to give out credit or blame to others for choices that I have made- good or bad. That being said, some events in my past have certainly led me to make choices that have shaped the woman I’m trying to become. Leaving out these pieces would be painting an incomplete picture of our story, because as we said in our very first blog, memories form the building blocks of our lives.

I’ve always known my mother was broken. Before I even knew what that meant. And it was my job to make sure she was ok. To be the level head, to be her friend, her co-conspirator, her shoulder for when the hurts of the past crept up and bubbled over. One of my earliest memories is comforting my mother.

She pulled the car over into a parking lot off of Rundberg Ln. in Austin. She couldn’t see through her tears to drive. I was scared, but I didn’t know why. The intensity of her sobs screamed ‘danger!’, ‘emergency!’ My first grade reasoning told me that if she was crying so hard, something really bad must have happened. I climbed into the front seat and found some napkins in the glove box. Handing them to her, I asked her why she was crying. The snippets I remember are of her explaining to me how everyone always leaves her. How her mother didn’t want her (my maternal grandmother drove off to start a new family leaving my 5 year old mother and her 3 siblings with relatives), her father chose a new family (my mother would spend a good part of her childhood being passed between family members and then marry at 16), and she was unwanted and unloved. So, I comforted her. Of course she was loved. I loved her. Wasn’t that enough?

I was in second grade. My step-father’s mom was visiting. There was so much yelling that one particular night. I had the covers pulled over my head in my mom’s room. The voices got closer and in an instant they filled the space around me. My mom was pleading. I peeked out and watched as he pointed with authority “NO! You will get down on your knees and apologize.” My mother was sobbing. His mother stood in the doorway. I watched my mother, tears creating dark rivers down her face, turn. She dropped to her knees. She apologized for whatever she’d done. I remember the feeling of utter disgust and thinking “Never will I EVER be like her. Never will I EVER let someone make me do that.” My heart wept as I understood as best a child can that my mom wouldn’t protect me. She couldn’t stand up for herself.

It was after Jace and Aubrie were born, that my mother’s sketchy judgment hit me in the face. She’d been trying to convince us to allow our kids to see part of my family that, though I love, I’d determined were not a healthy example for my children. “You’re too protective! So-and-so wouldn’t hurt them, it’s not like they’re dangerous! You always blow everything out of proportion!” she accused. What I kept saying, that she refused to hear was that physical harm was not what I was concerned about.  Little children have big ears. How long would it be until Jace asked me what a joint was? How long until Aubrie repeated a curse word? How young would they be when they were exposed to adult material via electronics? When would my children start to mimic their speech? No. That world was not going to be their normal.

When I started to consider the life I wanted for my children, I was able to look at the questionable instances in my life from a parent’s point of view. And I was horrified.

Sitting on a relative’s lap on a plastic chair outside a shady apartment complex while holding a box containing little baggies with white powder? Normal. When I was small (too young to remember my age) I said things that led my mother to believe someone had been inappropriate with me. Authorities were notified. Events unfolded. She couldn’t have prevented what she didn’t know, but once she knew, she certainly could have made sure I was never in the same room with that person again. As it was though, not only was I around this person for a number of years, but I was allowed to spend the night where they lived. Nothing ever happened again. What I learned from the situation though, was that when something bad happens, I cannot trust my mother to protect me. 

These two examples of situations in which my mother didn’t exercise the best judgment were normal to me. But this brand of normalcy wouldn’t touch my children. Their childhood would be soaking up the love of God, it would be resting in the comfort of their Daddy’s strong arms, it would be the gift of having a mother love them with such a consistent ferocity that they took it for granted- never realizing that it could be any other way for them. As she was leaving that day she told me, “You just think you’re better than everyone else.” My promise was, “I may not be, but my kids will. That’s what they deserve.”

I would have no way of recognizing it in my childhood, but God in His loving way was already very much at work in my life. He instilled in me a resilient spirit, a heart that refused to harden, and a hope for a different sort of future. His faithfulness overwhelms me. I believe that He allowed me to recognize the wrongness of my home-life so that later when I had a laundry list full of ‘don’ts’ and I was intentionally seeking ‘do’s’, I would be more receptive to Him. I knew with a certainty the kind of woman, wife, and mother that I didn’t want to become, and when I started looking around me for examples of women I could emulate, the Lord delivered. 

And I am thankful.

Growing Pains

Amanda:

Often I find that the anxiety I associate with unknown territory or big changes in my life doesn’t come from the situation itself. It stems from the choices before me. What if I make the wrong one? Mike and I made the first decision: we would be together. I knew that one was solid, but there were a multitude of other choices we would have to make in the coming months. How do two college kids go from deciding whats best for 'me' to what's best for 'us'? Even though we wouldn’t marry until Jace was 4 months old, we approached our relationship as if we already were. Breaking up was not an option we left on the table. So… what next?! Unfortunately no one handed us a manual on ‘How to Build the Foundation for a Healthy Marriage in 7 Months!’

Mike:

So, at this point in the story, I should jump in and say that I was absolutely terrified.  I didn’t know how to raise a child.  I didn’t know how to be a husband.  Hell, I didn’t even know how to adequately feed and provide for myself.  My diet consisted mostly of macaroni and cheese, five dollar pizza, and Coke and rum.  I was working at a candy store.  I was in school, but I wasn’t paying attention so I BOMBED a couple classes that I should have sailed through.  I’m no dummy, but I was sure playing that role right then.  I was just wasting time. I had no anchor, no purpose.  

When we got the wake-up call that I needed to grow the heck up, I had no time to think about it and no time to waste on frivolous things.  Things changed quickly, from school to work and everything in between. In the time it took to drive all those places, the major thing on my mind was, “What in the world am I doing?  How am I going to make this work?!”  As I said, I was 18 and not ready for this.  I always thought I’d go through a few ‘wild’ years in college, graduate with a good degree, get married a couple years later, and have some kids once my career had fully matured.  Our choices put us on a different course, and my plan turned into a hodgepodge of torn-up dreams and best intentions.

If you know anything about me you’ll know that I like a plan, even if it’s a sparse, basic skeleton of one. At that point that I had no contingency, no fallback.  So, when my original was taken away, I went into panic mode.  I  was simply…scared.  How do you deal with setbacks?  With screw-ups?  With things that throw your life upside down in just about every way possible?  This is an issue I had to deal with (and, of course, Amanda did, too) at 18, when I hadn’t prepared.  My entire repertoire of feelings was within about ten degrees of ‘terrified.'

Amanda:

I headed back to finish my Spring semester at Baylor and ended up sleeping through most of it. I think the combination of emotional chaos and the first trimester of pregnancy were players in that. Looking back though, I wonder if I wasn’t trying to sleep off the nightmare my life was becoming. Mike would go on to spend the remainder of his semester with a rum and coke as his constant companion. Gosh we were a mess. I didn’t even have a car to move myself back to Austin when the semester was over. I had to hitch a ride with someone.

I remember walking into Mike’s house, now our house, fighting the urge to bolt. But I didn’t. Instead, I became intimately acquainted with Half Price Books over the next few months. Walking through the marriage, self-help, and parenting sections in a fog I would think, “I can’t believe this is my life” and would then adjust my thinking to “This is your life, Amanda. Suck it up.” The books that I picked up would become my syllabi. Discussions with Mike on breaking unhealthy cycles, love languages, and expectations in marriage would replace lectures.

Mike was as involved as he could be. He enthusiastically went to every appointment, asked questions, and got to know our doctor. I really don’t know how he managed it all. The summer going into his sophomore year he was a man on a mission. He switched his major from aerospace engineering at the University of Texas to accounting at Texas State and took an arduous 15 hours that fall semester. Because of his course load as well as the time it took to drive from Austin to Texas State in San Marcos, Mike also changed jobs and began stocking shelves at HEB. This meant he had to be at work as early as 3am some days. The night that our son was born Mike was running a fever of 102, the roads were iced over, and he still drove his sleep-deprived self to San Marcos to take his finals the following day. My husband is an absolute champion and I am blessed beyond measure to be his wife.

Mike:

We had a lot going on. Pregnancy is no joke. We had to go to and pay for doctor’s appointments, we needed TONS of things to get prepped for the baby, and to top it all off Mandy’s nose decided she could only eat certain things (so I could only eat certain things!). She did amazing growing that boy, even with all the turmoil in our life.  I love that woman, and I love showing her.  As an 18-year-old, that meant buying things for her. I bought her the fanciest ring I could afford—and put all two grand of it on a credit card.  With everything we had going on, I simply neglected that one little bill. 

Eventually, I had to face the music—and Amanda.  We got to the point that the electricity was shut off at the house more than once, so I had to break down and tell her that we were in money trouble (duh).  They weren’t repossessing the house (we were renting) or taking the cars (paid off), but her ring might have been first on the list to go.  How could I tell her that?  Again, the terror came up and just stuck with me, but I had to face the music this time.  There was no avoiding it, so I finally told her. 

She didn’t react in a way I thought she would.  She was obviously worried (more than worried), but it wasn’t the end of the world—or our marriage—that I thought it would turn out to be.  We talked through it.  I told her how overwhelmed I was simply with the idea of it, and how scared I was about what the people on the other end of the phone line would do when I told them I couldn’t pay them back right then.  Typical collector’s tactics, maybe, but it sure worked on 18-year-old me.  To my amazement, Amanda took the lead and talked to them instead.  I say talked, but I know it was more than that. I could hear the emotion in her voice as she explained the situation to them to get some resolution we could afford to live with.  I was amazed by her actions, but even more by her attitude.  That reinforced in me so strongly that we were really in this together.  I’d made a royal mess of things trying to do it all on my own.  Now here she was to help me along in the process to get things right.  She’s bailed me out of more bad situations than this one, but as one of the first, it sticks in my mind like none of the others ever really can.
 

Amanda:

This situation became a relationship strengthener when it could have easily been a deal breaker. Mike has always been a super hero to me. He never let me see him sweat. I thought there was nothing he couldn’t do and he worked hard on keeping me unaware of any hiccups. The two major lessons we learned from this hurdle are ones that are still front and center in our relationship today:

Trust that your spouse has your best interests at heart and go from there and:

Communication is like flame retardant.

We’ve found that if we approach every argument or misunderstanding with the assumption that the other absolutely has our best interests at heart, we can then move on to communication. I say communication is like flame retardant because if Mike and I constantly have an open line of communication with each other, then problems that could turn into major volcanic eruptions end up only being brief sparks put out by the cool water of compassion, and a sincere desire to understand the other’s point of view.

When Life Throws You Curves...You Make a Decision.

Mike:

I guess our story really starts when we were freshmen in college.  There is obviously back story from before then that we’ll probably hit on as we go throughout all of this, but the real happenings start in Spring of '05. 

Ok, let me set the stage:  I’m 18. My state of mind was pretty much what you're thinking:  hormones raging, just out of the house for real on my own, in college, totally undecided about life, and incredibly immature in every way possible.  And then the bombshell hit:  Amanda comes into town to tell me that she’s pregnant.  Now, can you imagine what’s going through my head at this time?  This was not the plan for life.  I mean, I’d said from the beginning of our relationship that I intended to marry her, and I meant it.  I just didn’t think it would be so…sudden.  So final.  So right then, make the decision, are you really in or out, do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars.  At that moment, when she told me she was pregnant, my girlfriend of two years could become one of two things:  either the woman that I really, truly intended to spend the rest of my life married to, or simply the mother of my child.  She really gave me that choice, and told me that she wouldn’t hold it against me either way. The ball was in my court.

So…how can I react?  In the span of about three seconds, I flashed through this little baby’s life without me, and decided I couldn’t do that to him or her.  I couldn’t leave Amanda, who I truly loved, no matter how stupid I was being, to care for this kid alone.  Even if I sent money every month, how is she honestly going to handle it?  My decision was practically made for me, before I ever even had a chance to stew on it.  I had to stand up for this little being and the young woman I loved but took for granted, and be the husband and father for them—to provide, to protect, to raise and guide.  I couldn’t see anyone else doing that for them, and I wouldn’t be able to stand looking myself in the mirror every morning knowing I abandoned that responsibility. 

So I tell her I’m in.  All in, ready to take the reins, ready to provide and protect.  I was in no way ready, but I’d made that decision.  I hoped she would stick with me when I made that decision, and she didn’t fail me.  

Mandy:
Once we came to the decision that we were going to raise this baby together, we were all in. But I still had a lot to sort out. I was terrified and so disappointed in myself.  My senior year of high school was THE year for me. I’d quit the dance team after trying to balance my many extracurricular activities with my grades. The sacrifice was worth it: I got into Baylor.

I vividly remember the afternoon I opened that letter. There it was! Black and white confirmation that my hard work had paid off. The memory is so clear. My mom and step-dad walked in the room wondering what I was hollering about. My jubilation spilled over and for a second I forgot to be strong. I forgot to keep my walls up. “I got in!”, I gushed. His eyebrow shot up. “I don’t know why you’re so happy. You can’t afford it.  It’s not like you’re actually going.” You bet your butt I was. I wrote letters, researched, and prayed. I did everything in my power to raise the money for my first year and then ran. I was DONE living in that apartment watching a toxic cycle repeat itself—and being collateral damage. After the man that raised me decided that I'd never amount to anything my mantra became "It's a lie. He's wrong!".  Being on Baylor's campus meant everything to me. It was the proof I needed that the phrase I'd been hammering into my own consciousness was indeed true. It was a lie. He was wrong.

Watching those pink lines show up on that pregnancy test crushed me. My heart, my head, my soul were tugged in a million directions at once. What was I going to do?! I repeated the only words I could muster over and over again “I don’t know how to feel. I don’t know how to feel.” I was terrified of telling Mike. Not because I thought he’d be angry, but because I knew he had a strong sense of duty and I couldn’t stand the thought of him being in a relationship with me out of obligation. The anger and disappointment I felt towards myself was almost too much for me to handle. I was a 19 year old Hispanic girl who was pregnant and unmarried. Good job, Amanda. Way to land yourself in exactly the situation you never wanted to be in. Another statistic. College drop out. Failure. It could have consumed me. It started to, but things turned around when I thought about my baby. What would being born into this mean for him or her? That got me into a different frame of mind real quick. I put the brakes on and ended my pity party. We made this mess of a beginning for this precious life. We did it. But our current reality didn’t have to determine our baby’s future.  

Mike:

So, we made a decision.  Looking into the future from that point, we made the best decision we could have: we would do this together, and we were going to be the best parents we could for this kid.  Failure, divorce, or using our age as an excuse were not options.  We would both sacrifice whatever we needed to, because that’s what this child deserved. 

The decision was the easy part.  Living out that decision has turned out to be the hardest—yet most rewarding—part of all.  We haven’t been perfect towards each other or to our kids.   We haven’t gone down the easy, happy path all the time.  We’ve made mistakes, we’ve been stupid, and we’ve learned all along the way.  The biggest thing we did at that time, though, was to choose a path.  And to start down it together.  We committed ourselves to do this thing, raise this child in the best way we could figure out how, together.  That was hard, it was terrifying, and it was absolutely the right decision. 

Mike & Mandy

Easter 2007

Shake Your What?

When our two girls were 3 and 4 they were obsessed with the Care Bears. I guess we asked for it by calling our 3 year old Kher-Bear (or Bear, Bear-Bear, but seldom her given name- Kherington). After a certain episode during one of our Care-A-Thons Kherington started randomly shakin' her little tooshie. We asked her what she was doing...She was shaking her rainbow! Ha! Apparently someone's Care Bear Rainbow ended up on another Bear's bottom....laughter ensues. From then on when Kher starts a'shakin' in and we ask her to slow it down, she replies "But it's got a rainbow on it!!". Can't argue with that.

Memories like this are what make up our stories. They're the building blocks holding families together, or tearing them apart. What will our kids remember? I hope it's the laughter, the sheer delight of being a child. I want to give them that. Childhood is a blessing many children miss out on. Balancing out the wild freedom of their early years with the discipline required to raise up effective adults is too delicate to be called a formula and too littered with potholes to be called a road. But that's where we are and that's what we do. Sometimes gracefully, and always by the grace of God.

So welcome, ye fellow tightrope walkers, you weary daddies, and caffeinated mommies. Be blessed and have a laugh as you read our lessons learned, hurdles conquered, disasters narrowly avoided, and epic, EPIC fails.

Mike and Mandy