#parryadventures

   By the way….Many people have told me, give it till 2 years…then you’ll be sick of him! Well, guess what??? I’m not! We are going through amazing stress right now with Grandma Harry just having broken her hip, living on a single income and life’s ups and downs, but we talk and talk and when we think we’ve got it figured out we talk some more.

Will really brought up some things that I needed to hear on our anniversary and they have changed me already! He was having a particularly exhausting jet lagged time and I was wanting to go on an adventure. We sat and he pointed out that  when I had hard days he always tried to put himself in my shoes, give me the benifit of the doubt. He’d noticed that in our 2 years married, I did not seem to try to do the same thing. He was right! I admitted I was unaware of my selfishness but that now he had made me aware, I could work on it with all my heart. We came up with a word he could say that he could whisper so I would catch myself and put myself in his shoes. It was not the 2nd anniversary I had expected, but it was a growing one, one I will cherish as much as I did the steak he prepared for dinner!

I love being married! It is more than I ever expected it to be. Hard and fantastic all at the same time. Oh, and having a super hot husband doesn’t hurt either!

DRAMA POST WARNING: In high school I was introduced to a book called, “I Kissed Dating Goodbye,” by Joshua Harris. I read things here and there but slowly started to believe “courtship” was the only way to true and pure love and marriage. I read the next book, while my Mom began to question my thoughts and my stance on dating and marriage. She didn’t agree with my learned black and white view of dating I read about in these books. I didn’t listen. What teenage daughter listens to their “out dated, old fashioned” Mom? I began to feel shame for sexual thoughts, kissing my boyfriends and started to “court” men, instead of dating. Flash forward 10 years. I meet the love of my life and after years of therapy to let go of this romanticized view of the perfect way to enter marriage and shame, Will and I start to date. He respected me, but was always there to talk things out as I continued to question my thoughts and old views….as I started to listen to my Mom. We have been married for a year and a half, and this morning we talked about cults, about followings and he brought up “courtship” seeing that for some law enforcement agencies this is a buzz word for some cults they are investigating. I pulled up Joshua Harris’ book and saw this article. I am not sure I know what to say. I was greatly impacted by this man’s words and I was too young to know the difference. There are forums for people to voice their pain and anger. I have read quotes from people who still feel shame…. I am still digesting all of this…. Food for thought, thoughts for food.

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/faithbased/2016/08/i_kissed_dating_goodbye_author_is_maybe_kind_of_sorry.html

Well, Will is in finals week.  It feels like forever and I miss him a ton as he types away up in the office. I know he is doing this for us, to make it possible for us to own a house, to have land, to have money to travel, to retire well and have pups. We have goals and no one said to attain these goals would be easy or perfect, but man it is hard. I am not sure I would ever suggest to anyone that in the first 2 years of their marriage, one person in the couple go back to school, but for us that was not an option. Will needed to go full time, and I was just done with school and wanted to work for a few years before going back to school myself.

Work life for me has been a real challenge, one that I was not expecting.  When I got into health care I was sure that people in health care would do just that… CARE! But I have been amazed to see that money is what drives so many companies.  Will has had to talk me through the tough lessons I have learned…DO NOT wear your heart on your sleeve, DO NOT talk about more personal things than the weather, DO NOT expect everyone to want to be your friend, DO NOT expect to make friends at work, BE OKAY with people not giving a crap about you, DO NOT take anything personal….ETC.

Poor Will. His wife is such an open, loving, caring, with no boundaries, honest, hard working, loyal, stick up for the underdog lady.

So as he types away, getting himself ready for finals…As I miss him….As I sit here on an icy December day thinking about the lessons from work I have learned….I am hopeful, that in a week I will get my husband back and I will have learned to be proud of the lessons I have learned, no disappointed by the reality of life in the work place.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The text was blurry as I looked down after a long, long, looooooong day at work.  I cleared my glasses and then my eyes teared up as I read, “Good news! The tumor was non-malignant.” It was from my Dad.  It was everything I had wanted to hear since his “simple procedure” went crazy and left him in the ICU for 2.5 days, and had Will and I up in NY for the last two weekends to help with Dad and Mom. The rush of relief sent my heart into massive flutters and this headache came on like none I had experienced in a long time.  My chest tightened and I just let the tears fall as I went about the end of my day chores at work, thanking God everyone had already gone home.

For the past 3 weeks I have been left in complete chaos, from my job to my dad’s hospitalization to Will’s dad’s hospitalization.  The stress I have felt has been unlike any other and no matter how much I give it to God, give it away, journal it, go for a run my true peace is in Will’s arms. He is my one constant in all of this change, in all that is now beyond  my control. In the past 3 weeks I have snapped at him, I have nagged him, I have started little tiffs only to be loved in return. The stress of not knowing if my Dad had cancer, of not knowing how Dad Parry’s MRI turned out, in not knowing so much in my everyday work life, I lashed out at the one person who I promised to cherish from “this day until I die.” Will and I had a very important talk about money on our last trip down from NY. We both were getting defensive and finally I just put my hand on his leg and said, “Will, it’s just money.  We have to promise to always talk to each other about money straight up and honestly and we can never, EVER let it come between us.  Pinkie swear….” we crossed our pinkies and kissed our thumbs…the usual pinkie promise, DUH.

This first year and a half of marriage has been amazing.  It has been full of ups and downs but what I am most amazed by is how even in all the work of making sure we talk and don’t just assume, that feeling of floating when he kisses me hello after we walks in the door from school, that complete draw I have to him physically, mentally and spiritually, that is all still there.  In the midst of all the chaos, I just have to be still with him, just lay in his arms and study his smile wrinkles and the anger, the little tiffs they just fall away.

He is my constant. My dear heart.  My one and only!

Friday mom sent me the word that my Father, who had just undergone serious kidney surgery had begun to bleed internally. My boss sent me on my way early, and Will and I were headed up to NY within the hour. 5 hours later I walked into the ICU at Northern Westchester Hospital to my tall, strong, Dad now sick, vulnerable and hooked up to everything possible.  The occupational therapy assistant in me (who had started her career taking and monitoring vitals) looked at all the numbers before I actually approached my Dad.  All numbers were normal despite his nasal-canula and the monitors stuck to his chest, IVs coming out of both arms like spider man. For the next 2 days I was the walking dead.  I slept in a wonderful hotel bed for 12 hours each night, but woke to anxiety that exhausted me. Will was beside me through it all, while still making sure he was getting his grad school work done so his grades didn’t go down. He was superman.

There was a moment, mom was out of the room, Will in the caregivers lounge doing work and it was me and Dad.  Dad had nodded off and the lights in the ICU were dim.  Soft beeping sounds came from all machines all over the ICU as family members settled into their own evening watch of their loved one. My dad’s compression leg sleeves sounded like soft breathing as the air was pumped in and out to make sure no blood clots formed and moved into areas of my Dad’s body to cause more harm. I lay on his bed next to where he sat in the Geri-chair and positioned my hand carefully on his arm between the IVs. He turned his head and opened his eyes only to shut them again slowly.  He was so at peace. I thanked God so much for our reconciliation talk the last time he was in Baltimore.  I thanked God that I was able to be only a 5 hour drive to be by his side. His skin was soft and I just looked at my Papa. “Make it, Dad!  Do you hear me? Make it!” I closed my eyes and tears came down my cheeks.  I wanted to just rip all the stuff off him and make him get up and dance with me, but just as that impulse came, it went and I was left, me and Papa, in the ICU, prayers and love and fear and sheer exhaustion.  I was left simply wanting to crawl into his arms and have him hug me with his big bear hug that always makes me feel so safe. “I will be strong for you Dad.  I will be strong, and you will get better and we will be just fine….we are fine….just fine.” He didn’t hear me speak.  Mom came into the room and took out her cards to work on and offered me a bottle of water.

Today is the first day back to work and I am missing Dad like crazy. My heart is in Westchester and even though Dad was moved on his Bday to a normal room and out of the ICU I am on edge. The tumor they removed was in the center of his kidney and they had to remove 2/3 of his kidney to make sure there were wide margins around where the tumor had been. We are waiting to hear from the pathologist news of what this tumor is. I feel like I am floating, like I want to scratch out of my body and run and hide under the covers.  With work stuff going nuts, with Will’s dad having a spot picked up on the MRI and my Dad in the hospital I must admit I feel I am in a storm I have never known before.  Part of me wants to zone out staring at the wall, sipping a nice shot of tequila.  The other part wants to have a sleep fest until all problems and answers are solved and fixed.

Tonight I will have my own evening watch….and every night another, until my Dad is home, the pathology comes back clean, Will’s dad is fine, my job settles down and I can hum again and roll my windows down with the music blaring and have not a care in the world.

It’s been a year and 3 months.  We are married and madly in love. So, why do people have to say these words, “Just wait….soon you will just get ___.”  (Add negative word) I was told by a patient when I worked in a nursing home to enjoy this time, this honeymoon.  She was about the only person who said to forget my gaining 25 pounds in a year, forget my aching cheeks from the smiles I could not shake….to enjoy this honeymoon time and that’s it.  Others though, “wait until you hit 20 years, then you will just want to get away from him.”  It is always a, “just wait until _____!  in ___ years you will be over it.”

Why can’t us newly weds just have our moment?  Why can’t we be a year and three months in and still be unable to keep our hands off each other?  What if we can continue this honeymoon for the next 50 years?

I am in love with William A. Parry.  He is my everything.  He literally is my rock and all that I have to keep me sane in this crazy world.  Every time we start to have issues with each other we stop and talk about it.  We do not brush the little stuff under the carpet, because a little can become a lot if you are not careful. My heart is full tonight from simply spending the day in the house with him. He is cloistered away in the office studying, but I am down here doing nothing for the first time in a long, long time. It is refreshing and delightful. And I will not “just wait…” I will be in the moment and love every second I have with this amazing man I call my husband.

The time has come…time to stare into the face of a challenge.  Will got me started, running beside me as I trained for my 5k.  Now, I train for my 10k. I have 110% support of my husband, who loves me no matter what.  I am so excited to face my fears and come into my own.

A year ago this week, Will and I were in the Caribbean on our Honeymoon.  We had been given the trip by Will’s parents and it was amazing.

Will and I have been married for a year and a month, and it has been a beautiful journey that I have waited for my whole life.  When I was 24 I was almost engaged and when that broke off, my heart was wounded in a way I never thought it could be, nor did I ever think it would recover.  I waited 10 years, failed relationship after failed relationship and had just about given up when I met Will.  It was not my plan to get married at 34.  I was “supposed to” get married at 24 like my mom.  But when 24 came, and my heart was broken, life sort of went on pause.  I still traveled, lived all over the states and traveled to many countries, but my heart was empty.  So many people told me that if I just prayed hard enough, if I just had faith, “God’s perfect timing would bring or not bring a man into my life.”  Well, I now think all that was crazy, and that sometimes life just happens and we don’t get our way not just because God has other plans but because we are busy becoming who we need to be so when we meet that other person we are ready to embark on our new set challenge.  Will and I know for a fact that if we had met at any other time in our lives we would never have been into each other.  34 seemed 10 years too late, but it has been 10 years of pain and sorrow and joy and growth that made me into the woman that now is able to love Will with everything I have in me.  I hate to say that everything happens for a reason, because it makes trauma seem trivial, but with Will and myself, life happened just as it needed to.

The fear of never being loved is often what we hear about.  The fear of being loved is the mystery that rages within some of us.  The fear that the chaos could stop, that the anxiety could go, that stability does in fact exist.  It is so easy to sit in anxiety when it is all you’ve ever known.  Stability is the unknown, not chaos.  It is so hard for Will to understand what I mean when I tell him what I have just written above.  “Wouldn’t you want to get out of chaos?” he asks often.  What he doesn’t understand is that our marriage IS stability for me.  When I wake up to his cooking, when I come home to his cooking, when we pass moments in complete silence just holding each other, or tend to different chores while together in the apartment, he is my stability.  I have to say that I am a bit sappy and I find that even after we hug good night and roll to our sides of the bed I get homesick for his arms. The thought of us being apart for more than a night, takes the wind out of my sails and I tear up.  To have my default become happy, positive, joyful without feeling the rug will fall out from under me is so new and amazing.  To not fight, but to talk out all our thoughts and differences without doors being slammed or glasses being broken, this is new.  To be so in love that I can honestly say, “getting married was the best decision of my life,” makes me smile. And yes, the naysayers comment like, “oh, just wait 7, 10, 30 years….you will be wanting a break from him,” but for now, 10.5 months into marriage I am so happy to tear up at the thought of not spending a night next to my love, to not waking up to his beautiful face, to not having our morning coffee chats for 3 mornings…I am gonna let myself tear up. I was waiting for 34 years to find my William Parry, and now he is mine, my handsome and loving husband who puts me first and cares for my every need. I do not want to take for granted a single hour, minute, second being with him.  So, Memorial Day 2016…enjoy my husband, but he is mine! lol!

I have thought long and hard about this post….what I would say….how I would say it? I think being married brings about a revolution to my identity. For 33 years I dated in hopes of finding “The One!” I dated casually one summer, but other than that I have been in serious relationships that have ended with, “It’s not you, it’s me,” stated by the guy turning his back and walking away.  I am not saying I am a victim or a martyr.  I have played an active role in placing too much emphasis on the “we” of my old relationships and not establishing a “me” throughout the duration of each relationship.  I BECAME each relationship, instead of maintaining healthy boundaries and seeing myself as important as the guy who was sitting across the table from me on date after date.  After being dumped by eHarmony boyfriend of 2 years, where I gave more of myself than I thought possible, I gave up on dating for a whole year.  I traveled to London to visit close family friends.  I traveled to Oregon to spend time with my Uncle and cousins in Washington state.  I went to NY to visit my Mom and Dad and when my final year in my occupational therapy assistant program began, I threw myself into my studies, achieving honors in all my classes and was picked to be the key note speaker at my graduation.  I went to therapy to figure out what the heck was the matter with me that I gave almost all of myself for the approval of the men I dated. Then I gave online dating a second chance, met Will and with all the knowledge I had obtained in my year of “Me” I was able to balance falling in love with having healthy boundaries, keeping me from worshiping Will and making him run away like ALL the others before him.

So, now we are here.  9 months into marriage and I am insanely in love with William A. Parry. Only this time, I find myself maintaining this state of, “Me vs We.” When we discuss our future and our dreams I use the word, “me” almost without blinking, and I find that he is always catching himself saying, “I” and “me” and apologizing as he corrects himself to, “us” and “we.” I am always amazed by this, and after over a year in relationship land with Will, I am starting to let my walls come down.  I will say, “When I go out west to visit my cousin…” he will jump in and say, “when WE go out went to visit your cousin.” Or he will start off saying, “my parents were wondering…..I mean OUR parents were wondering…” These little corrections which include me into his passions and dreams, these little corrections which break down my defensive walls, make my heart feel safe and special.  I am not a “me” so much now as I am a “we” and I am okay with that. The wildly independent, single women in me that was made that way after years of breakups and rejections, is starting to see that there is no need to be afraid of “we.” I have not lost myself because I choose to become Mrs. Parry and use “we” instead of “me.”  There no longer needs to be a war between “me vs we.” Will and I are married, our dreams have become united as we choose to put each other first throughout every morning, every day, every week and so on. I think one day soon I will stop being surprised when he corrects my “me” talk and turns it into “we” talk.  Until then, I will revel in the scripture verse that says, “I am my beloved’s and he is mine.” I do not feel threatened to be a “we” like I thought I would be. Instead I feel covered and loved, like I finally belong.