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.