I have a guy

I have a guy who loves me unconditionally.  He has for thirty one years.  We started dating as babies,  I was 17 an she was 20.  I had never had a boyfriend or been on a date.  He had a few dates but no girlfriend.  At first meeting, I thought he was so cocky and trying way to hard to be big man on campus.  I was totally turned off by him at first.  I don'y know really when it started to turn but it was soon after we met.

One thing I was impressed by was he was really honest once I got to know him.  He was two years ahead of me in pharmacy school and had saved old tests.  He not only shared them with us, but he also spent time with me as I studied.  He spent so much time helping me with mnemonics to learn.  We had a study carousel on the third floor of the library we would go to every night after dinner.  He would study on one side and I the other.  In our breaks we talked.  He shared study tips and also who he was.

I learned instead of big man on campus he was really a true science geek.  I learned he was honest and true and loyal.  If he told you something he meant it.  He was way more serious in our relationship than I was and at times that scared me.  After our first year together we spent four years in a long distance relationship.  There were many times I was ready to hand it up and give up.  I would then pray and always came to the answer to wait to see him the next time.  Well you know... I never did break up with him.

We married five plus years after we started dating and welcomed our first baby a year and ten days later.  Nothing in our life really went as we had planned.  We have been through a lot together.  We have had three children, one of whom has a long term chronic condition that took ten years to diagnosis.  Our son we learned had a learning disability that he needed extra help with.  

As a team, he worked the most and my job besides a part time job was to manage the health and learning of our kids.  All these years later and I am the one working two jobs and still caring for them all.  

Joe's newest thing is to constantly jump and see if I need help.  if I am in the kitchen saying good morning to Daisy he comes to see if I need help.  If I am working at the kitchen table he comes to see if I need help.  At times it is super overwhelming.  Yet right now I can see it is who he has been for our entire relationship.  He has and remains there to make sure that I am our children are doing the best that we can be.  

I struggle with how to love him as he is and know it is who he has been for the past three decades and at the same time to use want to be able to move around and do what needs to be done.   He hovers constantly and I know that is all out of love.  He is constantly "right there" in the way as we try to get things done and I also know it is all done out of love.  I know when he is gone I will miss him.  But I also am really missing the life we had planned and missing having him as a partner and not having to be responsible for everything.  I feel the things that have happened in our life have all been making me stronger and ready to handle this but it is so hard to single handily have to manage an entire household especially with high emotions of a wedding being put off and something like a global pandemic.  Someday I pray life is just more simple.  But I am amazingly grateful for the gift of faith to support us through it all.