Life and It's Curveballs: Facing and Overcoming 3 Tough Lessons

I have been on a trying but rewarding journey. That is why I stopped writing for the last little while. My husband and I have been successful in whether our way through the storm together. We have moved to Utah, been watching Elizabeth grow up, celebrating her first birthday and celebrating some relationship milestones. Most of all my husband and I have been rekindling a relationship outside of living with his parents. Let me tell you ladies, there were three important lessons that I learned in the last two months. If I don't learn another tough lesson it will be too soon. But as always life will throw you curve balls whether you are ready for them or not. Here is a reader's digest version of what has happened. 

My husband is a recovering alcoholic and we hit a rough patch in his recovery. He started drinking again and a dark cloud was hanging over us. I had tried and exhausted many outlets to support him and present some help for him to take. Being unsuccessful, I fell back onto reassuring him that I loved him and that he and I would get through this together. His parents on the other hand had a different way of handling it. 

My mother-in-law was pressuring me to try tactics that I knew would not help husband and it caused tension between her and I. My father -in-law was demeaning and tearing my husband down every time he caught my husband drinking. All the pressure and negative comments that were applied were causing Lizzy to become scared, withdrawn and not wanting to be to far from me. It drove a wedge deep between my husband and I. We were fighting constantly after Lizzy went to bed. It was sending him down a destructive path, resulting in separating himself from Lizzy and I. His destructive behavior led me to make one of the hardest decisions in my life. I took Lizzy and moved down to Utah to seek refuge and help from my family. Knowing the risk that my actions may effectively end my marriage. Lizzy's safety and well being were my #1 priority.

While I was away it was a re-evaluation time for my husband and I. For the first week my husband and I didn't talk at all and I was bombarded by text messages and phone calls from my in-laws saying some very not nice things to me. Everything started happening so fast. The day after I arrived in Utah, I realized that I may become a single mother and started preparing myself for the worst. Wanting to huddle in a corner and give way to my fears, I knew I didn't have time to be scared. I had to figure out a way to provide for Lizzy and make her feel safe once again. With the help of my family, I found a job three days after being in Utah and found a place to live a week later. After Lizzy and I moved in with what little possessions that we had, I started to focus on making a life for us. 

The conflicting emotions of fear and happiness were constant for the first month. Which leads to my first lesson I had to learn.

Lesson 1: "Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not the absence of fear." - Mark Twain

For the first month, that Lizzy and I were in Utah tough on us and forced me to remember and rediscover who I really am. Living with my in-laws it caused me to lose who I was. Listening to someone telling me how to raise my daughter not only cause some trauma for her but made me feel like an inadequate mother.  Allowing decisions that were made against my beliefs and were made for me resulted in my inability to stand up for myself and second guess myself when I made my own decisions. Having someone dictate what I did, who I saw and where I went resulted in me completely surrendering who I was.

While I love my in-laws I was allowing them to dictate my life and make the decisions that Kyle and I should have been making as husband and wife. I finally stood up for myself and walked out with my daughter in my arms. The possible consequences of my decision to better my life and my daughters life were: 1- causing some emotional trauma for my daughter. 2- putting my marriage in jeopardy; 3- reducing my relationship with my in-laws to a civil and moderately awkward acquaintance level. Having the courage to stand up for yourself is one thing. Telling fear to take a hike, while it is staring you in the face, was another. In my situation the fear haunted me daily and sent white hot prickles through me at least three times daily.

The reassurance that I made the right decisions was seeing how much happier my daughter was once she and I moved out. She continued, if not jumped ahead, in her cognitive, developmental and behavioral milestones. My saving grace was the daily routine that Lizzy and I settled into quickly and having my parents to talk to on a daily basis. This prepared me for my second lesson which was the courage to mend the bridge between my in-laws and myself.

Lesson 2: Romeo and Juliette take a seat...this is going to get ugly. 

Those words spoken to me by my mother rang in my head relentlessly until I finally asked her how to start laying the bricks for the road to repair my relationship with my in-laws. Before talking to my mom I would have been happy not talking to my in-laws after what transpired between us. I was so angry and hurt at what was said to me and about me behind my back. All I wanted to do was just erase my in-laws from my life and allow Lizzy to spend time with them for vacations bi-yearly when she was old enough. After a long and grueling tough love talk from my mother she helped me see sense. If I didn't make an effort to preserve my relationship with my in-laws I would lose Kyle. The tough love discussion went well.

After three days of wrestling with my stubbornness, pride and getting my frame of mind to the right place I finally mustered up enough courage to draft up an email to my mother- in-law. I emailed my rough draft to my mother to read it and make sure that it didn't sound angry. She emailed me back saying that she was very proud of me for being sincere in my wanting to really work on my relationship. My email to my mother in law contained some rules and restrictions on how involved I wanted her in my life and that I would love for her to Skype with Lizzy on a regular basis. I also laid down some restrictions on the Skype as well. To me, she wrote her acceptance of the rules and restrictions but emailed my mother how rude and condescending I was. Needless to say she and I didn't talk until a week after that. 

Getting fed up with the constant whispering behind my back I finally called my mother in law after Lizzy was asleep. She and I yelled at each other for close to two hours. I finally told her how I felt, how I didn't appreciate the knife in the back and how my in-laws meddling in my marriage was not helping. My mother in law finally told me how she felt. Saying to me why her and my father in law were so involved. Just to spare the gory details, they didn't exactly approve of me in the first place while my husband and I started dating. They especially didn't approve of us getting married when we did. After some harsh words, tears and heated emails between her and my mother, the dust finally began to settle. The war with my parents, my in-laws and my husband and I came to an end.With all the casualties buried there are white flags waving on both sides. The white flags on our side, resulted in my husband Skyping with his parents and Lizzy two times a week. My white flag is weekly phone call to my in-laws once a week. The relationship now between my in-laws and I is now are friendly. Our parents, once again, have become friends. Accomplishing this, laid the foundation for lesson number three. 

Lesson 3: "...For better or for worse..." and its true meaning- 

Not many people know this about my husband and I but we are the unconventional couple. We do things a little out of the social norm. Kyle and I had Lizzy first before we got married. Through our talks and assessment of our marriage, over the last few months, we discovered that one of the biggest reasons why we got married was for the sake of Lizzy. It's not that we don't love each other, Kyle and I sometimes put duty above the heart. We also discovered that Kyle's recovery has been the second biggest focus of our relationship even before we got married. The third problem we found was his parents running our live from day one. All three intermingle, sometimes causing us to feel like we are fighting the vicious circle. Kyle's drinking was a prominent problem for the beginning.

A little over two years ago I moved in with Kyle and his family that was meant to be temporary. As I stated in a previous article on my blog, Kyle and I dated in high school. After a few months of me living with Kyle and his family we started spending time together on our days off from work. Fast forward a year, our relationship was suffering horribly so we scheduled a weekend get away for Valentine's Day in Moscow ID. While we were there we played pool, went for walks on the University of Idaho campus, went for countless drives, spent time with some old friends of mine and gave no thought to our problems that we left behind. Finally we had broken through our biggest issue and remembered why we were together. Our new found bliss ended a week after we came home and Kyle's drinking continued. Two weeks later, we found out that I was pregnant. It was an incredibly tense time for us. Kyle had hit rock bottom with his addiction and I had reached the end of my rapidly fraying rope with trying to help him. I was thinking about giving up and leaving. 

Finding out I was pregnant motivated him to make the decision to admit himself into rehab for an intense four week program. It motivated me to give us one last shot at bringing the man I loved back to the surface. At Sundown M. Ranch in Eastern Washington I visited Kyle two weekends out of the four he was there. We had a couple of talks while I was there about Lizzy and how I was coping. I told him I was getting though just fine. Kyle voiced to me that being apart from us while I was pregnant was not easy for him. Knowing this would happen before he left, I wrote him letters that he could open every day. They were filled with encouraging words, telling him I loved him and giving him weekly updates on what would be happening with my pregnancy as it progressed. I did that so he could feel like he was a part of it while he was away. After he came back things with us were much better. It didn't last very long until the above events took place. 

Long story short and tough discussions out of the way, we have agreed to finally start living our lives as a family. One of the new changes that we set in stone are Wednesday nights are going to be date night. Without fail so that we can remember that we are not only a family but we are a couple also. We also agreed that we would put his addiction on the back burner. He is doing well and we don't want him focusing 100% on it anymore. The third agreement, we will make decisions by ourselves as a couple and not include either of our parents unless we need advice. With these three new rules now in place we have reach a level of happiness that we have not experienced since our wedding day.

The moral of the story is: 1- The love and safety for a child is one of the most motivating and rewarding possessions to fight for your family. Remember you are also a team. Whether the storm as one, not seperately.  2 - find out who you are and be proud of it. Don't let other people tell you how you are supposed to act, believe and give in to them wanting you to surrender your happiness to please them. Don't let your differences come between you and your family. Squash problems the minute they arise. Don't let them fester and infect each other. Protect one another. At the end of the day all you have in this world is each other. 3 - the willingness to have those tough conversations between you and your significant other are not easy. If the husband and wife are on the same page the family is happy. Kyle and I found that secrets will only result in a short marriage and were caused many problems. Once you do, the heaviness in the room disappears and you two can, once again, see that light shining through the darkness that has been ominous and seemed never-ending.

To My Readers:

Thank you for reading my blog. You can look forward to another article in a week at the latest. If you have any questions or comments feel free to email me at farnsworth.sabrina13@gmail.com or leave a comment in the box below.

Until next time.

Sabrina Ferguson.