My Love

I only have love.  I love my husband so much.  He has done so much for me.  He has been a very supportive husband, especially when I wanted to go to school.  He encouraged me when I was at my weakest and thought I couldn't finish because I had failed my first test.  He told me, you can do it Mari, you're almost done.  I know you can do it.  Joel has encouraged me during the hardest of times and I admire him for that. He has been a very loving and caring husband and father.  The children adore him and they obey him out of respectful fear.  Joel is good at whatever he puts his mind to.  I love him.  I only have love for him, I have no other words to describe what I feel for Joel.  I only have love.

Joel is my best friend.  We spent the last 7 years of our lives together.  We have gone through many ups and downs.  We have pushed through many hard times, but throughout everything, we have held hands and got through the worst of storms together.  He is my best friend.  We laugh, we play, we watch movies together.  Most of my favourite memories in life are with Joel.  I used to think that I was in love when I was 7 years old.  Because of Joel, I know what real love is.  He loves me, and I love him.

My sister said that everything begins and ends with God.  We love because He first loved us.  I know what love is and I know how to love because I know that God loves me.  I love Joel because God loves me.  I love him no matter what happens because God loves me unconditionally.

I am not perfect and I make a lot of mistakes in life, but Joel is the first one to tell me when I am doing something wrong.  I don't take criticism lightly, he knows that.  But when Joel says something to me, I do fight back, but I listen and I learn.  I am stubborn.  I am very stubborn and I like to do things in a certain way.  Joel is the only person that could tell me, Mari, you need to do this this way.  Yes, I would fight back, but I knew he was right.  Joel was usually right a lot of the time.  It took a lot of time for me to learn how to submit as a wife, but because I loved and respected Joel so much as a husband, I was able to submit as a wife.  I do have my faults.  I like clothes piles.  I love clothes piles.  Joel was never a fan of my clothes piles. I also didn't like doing laundry.  I hated folding.  Joel was always best at the folding because of his Old Navy expertise.  I did help sometimes!!  I bet Joel hated folding laundry too, but he did it for me.  I love him for that.

I also hated doing dishes.  I get these rashes on my hands if I do them too much and then they start bleeding.  Joel always did the dinner dishes.  I would do the predinner dishes! But he would do the dinner dishes.  I loved him for that too.

I love spending time with him.  That's something I would constantly crave as a wife.  With our busy lives, Joel's 14 hour shifts, and me being in work and school, and doing homework and working from home, and taking care of the kiddos, and prepping dinner for Joel, our lives were busy.  It did become a routine, but there were the random days where we would get to spend time together, and I treasured every moment.  Joel always knew how to make me laugh.  He never not made me laugh.  He is one of the people that did make me laugh.  I'm not very easily amused.  Just by Joel.

In a marriage we both had to sacrifice so much of our needs and wants for the kids.  That's what happens when you get married young.  We had to sacrifice parts of our lives so that we could be good parents for the children.  I never thought I was missing out on much.  Joel made me so happy.  My kids made me happy.  Seeing them grow up and change, learn how to talk and walk and count, it's such a blessing.  My kids are the result of mine and Joel's love for each other.  And they are so loving, because me and Joel were so loving to each other.

Marriage is hard.  It's about two people learning how to become one.  Me and Joel are not going to always be one hundred percent in love.  There will be a lot of fights.  Big ones and small ones, but as long as we keep our love for the Lord the center of our marriage, I know that we can fight out the worst of the storms.

Everything begins and ends with God.  I will love Joel forever.  He is a wonderful father, a wonderful husband and a very loving man.  He is my heart and He is my forever.  My only love.  My love.

That's ridiculous.

Sometimes things don't work as you planned them.  I planned these holidays to go one hundred percent differently than what actually happened.  It's hard to write a blog without actually revealing what happened but secrecy is a must, for my sanity and for other people's sanity.

Therefore, as a result of secrecy, this will be a very emotional blog.  This past week has been absolute torture for me.  It feels as if someone just ripped my heart out of my body and I can hardly breathe.  Literally, it's hard for me to breathe.  It's hard for me to eat, or wake up every morning, or to go to sleep every night.  What I thought was happiness apparently wasn't.  When I thought things were okay, apparently they weren't.  At times I felt like I would rather be dead than to have to feel the pain of living.  That's how this past week has been for me.  It's hard to bounce back from such an emotional heartbreak, it really is, especially if it came out of nowhere.  I'm still somewhat in shock, hoping that I will wake up and this was all a horrible dream.  But every time I wake up, it's not a dream and my heart is still absent.

This past week I have learned about heartbreak, and now I'm learning about rebuilding.  Rebuilding my life and my heart from the very beginning.  I feel like a newborn baby, not knowing what to do, what to expect, wanting something and crying for it, and sometimes receiving nothing.  Maybe as a "newborn" I don't know what's good for me and I have to trust the Lord to take care of me and renew my strength.  I don't always get what I want.  Sometimes I expect something to happen and it doesn't and I get disappointed.  I need to learn how to trust the Lord to take care of me.  I need to learn how to trust.  I haven't been very good at that, apparently.  I have had to guard my heart for most of my life, and then when I let my guard down and feel like I can finally trust again, my heart has been snatched out of my body, tossed into the garbage, stomped on, spat upon, torn apart, ripped into a million pieces and here I am left lifeless and wandering in the dark.  That's what happens when you put your trust in people.  I need to learn how to put my trust in the Lord.  I need to learn how to love God first.  People say to guard your heart.  My heart is gone and is in the rebuilding phase.  It'll take a long time before I have a heart to guard.

My kids look at me with their innocent eyes and I don't know what to say.  I don't know how to respond to them anymore.  I feed them, I clothe them, I bathe them, I hug them, but my heart is gone and I feel like I don't know how to love them properly.  But my heart is in the rebuilding phase.  One day I'll learn how to live again, one day I'll learn how to love again.  Right now, I'm waiting on God, I'm depending on him to carry me through each day.  To give me strength to breathe in every breath.  To help me to take care of my children.  I'm depending on God to rebuild my heart.  It's just hard that once I actually let my guard down and actually trusted someone, I got hurt.  I'm scared.  I'm scared to love, I'm scared to trust.  I'm scared to be happy.  I'm just scared to live.  I don't want to be hurt anymore.  I don't want to be feeling this pain.  It's hard to live through each day.  Every day gets longer and longer and I dread waking up every morning.  God is helping me, every minute of every day, but it is a long, long process and I have to live one day at a time.  I'm not going to smile or laugh for a long time, right now it's hard to even get up.  But I have to take it one day at a time.

Maybe one day I'll be able to smile again.  Maybe one day I'll be able to laugh.  Maybe one day I'll even be able to love again.  But at this moment, for someone to expect something more of me other than just to be breathing, that's ridiculous.

How Do You Not Stress Out?

I'm tired.  I feel like all my blogs start off like this, but this time, I really am tired.  It's the last weekend before school ends which means, yes.....it means I have 6 exams this week.  One on every day of the week, and that includes Saturday.  So yes, I am tired.  Not only do I have 6 exams, I also have 2 assignments due and 1 presentation due.  So yes, I am tired.  I am spent, and I want to cry in a corner.

Not only do I have school, but I also have work, and flyer uploads and merchants and final QCing, and Job posting, all of which take up at least 2 hours a day of my time.  And yes, none of you know what flyer uploads, merchants and final QCing is and how tiring it is, but believe me it's tiring.  I also have OSing and emailing and it's just a lot of work.

Not only do I have school and work, but I also have kids.  Mateo is in his clingy phase, and by clingy I mean that I have to carry him ALL THE TIME or he will cry until your ears fall off.  It is driving me insane because I can't get anything done with a crying baby.  Josiah is in the phase where he doesn't want to do anything that I explicitly tell him to do BUT if I find a way to tell him to do something and make him think that it was his idea in the first place then he will do it.  Which takes a lot of thinking in a part of my brain that I don't really have space for.  So yes, I am tired.

Not only do I have school and work, and not only I am a mom, but I am a wife.  As a wife, it is my responsibility to take care of my husband and make sure that there is food on the table when he gets home from a hard day at work.  I have to make sure that I pay attention to him when he talks, and I have to cater to his needs and his wants and make sure that he is happy and content.  Not that this part of my life is a burden, it really isn't, and my husband helps me too, but sometimes it's hard for husbands to understand how much is going on in their wives' life and all the wives in this world can attest to what I am saying.

So right now, I feel like there is a huge world of pressure on my back.  I can't fail school, I can't fail work, I can't fail my kids, and most importantly I can't fail my husband.  It is a lot of pressure and I am tired.  I have never EVER been so tired in my life.  My body is tired, my mind is tired, I am soooo tired that I can't even sleep.  That's how busy my brain is.  I really don't think that anyone can understand how tired I am or how much I am going through right now, and I can't really talk about it to anyone because then I would be selfish venting about my life and stresses and I would be a failure because I can't handle everything.  I end up just clenching my teeth half the day, which is really bad for them.  But I clench my teeth when I feel like screaming or throwing a tantrum, but I can't.  Because what mom throws tantrums right?

This blog is more like a vent.  A very unfruitful vent.  Usually my vents end up being a life learned lesson, this one isn't really a life lesson, it's just a vent of how tired I am and how no one will really understand me and how I am so mega tired that I just want to crawl in a hole, plug my ears and hum lullabies to myself.

I forgot the topic of this blog....but then again, this is a brainfart blog so....

I was going to originally write a blog about life as a busy mom, student, worker etc. but that's all old news.  Apparently I'm old news because when I go to school everyone is younger than me and I realized that those younger than me have been raised in a different place than where I grew up.  Through this I have learned to appreciate what I didn't appreciate when I was younger:  my youth group, my youth pastor, and my sister, and my parents, and my cousins.  Without these people in my life, I wouldn't be who I am today: Awesome sauce!! Haha, just kidding...about the conceited awesome sauce comment that is, and not the people.

I feel like this generation maybe doesn't have the youth group strictness, the older sister strictness, the older cousin and parents strictness.  I feel like my generation in a way has given up on the whole role model aspect of our lives and we have left the younger generation to fend for themselves.  We have the mentality that we made our mistakes and let them make theirs, but there is no guidance.  This has been bothering me for quite some time because I have made many mistakes in my life, but really haven't tried to tell anyone younger than me how hard it is to deal with the consequences.  I feel like if there is a way that I can stop anyone from making the same mistakes that I did then I wouldn't feel so bad, but because I didn't tell anyone then I feel guilty if someone does make the same mistakes I did.  That's a very complicated sentence, as it is that complicated in my brain.  My sister says that I'm paranoid crazy, I think that I feel guilty too much for everything bad that happens in the world........but then again, maybe I should feel guilty because here I am watching people do horrible things and what am I doing to stop it?

I feel like I'm not doing enough to contribute to the world of teenage girls with many insecurities who find themselves searching for fulfilment in the wrong things.  I wish that I could be the older sister to someone like my sister was to me.  I just want to feed the world, tuppins a bag (inside joke between my brain and I, we like to make Mary Poppins references once in a while to each other).

I would also like to learn how to ride a bike, for the main purpose of joining some sort of charity and riding in a marathon to raise money.  I think that for the last couple of months I've been focusing on myself and my school work and my family that I feel like I'm not doing enough to contribute to the world and it's many insufficiencies (I don't even really know what that word means but it sounds like it fits, no?).

Also, I have realized that because I have been only focusing on me and my family, I haven't socialized with people who haven't yet adjusted to my oddities.  By attempting to talk to people I don't really know, I have realized that my social awkwardness has increased by a thousand percent.  It's grown so much so that I slowly start to hyperventilate as my husband and I drive up to a social event.  Even after we left my nephew's birthday party I started to re-evaluate the conversations I had and became to feel embarrassed about what I said and wondered if what I was saying was rude or highly inappropriate and wonder if I offended anyone.

What was I writing about again?

It's a New Year, No duhhh

Well, I guess it's time for that usual new year blog.  A reflection on 2011.  What did I learn?  I learned many things, but the main thing that I learned was how much of an impact sacrifice has made on my life.  Sacrifice, to me, is giving up the things that you want and need, giving up all of your own desires and selfishness for someone or something. 

In 2011 Josiah turned 2 years old, and I also had Mateo.  One child is a lot, two is too much.  With one child I was still able to do all of the things that I wanted to do, like go out to the mall, go for a walk around the block, eat out at a restaurant.  We were able to be Mari and Joel + 1.  With two kids it is a whole different ball game.  Literally, it's the difference between baseball and basketball.  Totally, totally different.  I can't go to the mall by myself, or go eat out at a restaurant, or even go for a walk around the block.  With Josiah and his tantrums, and Mateo being so dependent on me for everything, it makes doing anything for myself nearly impossible.  When I was on maternity leave, I couldn't do anything until Joel got home.  I couldn't even shower until Joel got home from work.  And Joel worked 7:30am to 9:30 pm so it was basically me watching the kids ALL day.  And then I still had to have dinner made by the time Joel got home.  So it was very hard for me to do anything.  Keep the house clean, breastfeed, feed Josiah, watch Mateo.  It got even harder when Mateo started crawling.  There were times that I would find him playing with the toilet water, and there would be times that he would be randomly chewing on something.  I think I found a dime in his mouth once.  It's hard with two children.  A lot of the time I didn't feel like I was me anymore.  I felt like I was just the mother of two.  I had lost my identity.  That's something I had to sacrifice.  I had to sacrifice myself for my children.  Not literally, but emotionally, mentally and physically I had to change myself to understand that I wasn't just Mari anymore.  I am a mother.  Mother Mari.

Emotionally I had to change my concept of feelings.  I couldn't show any emotion of fear or sadness because Josiah would lose his confidence in me, as a mom Josiah has to believe I'm brave and strong and fearless.  I remember one time I stubbed my toe on a chair and I started crying because it hurt so much and I looked over at Josiah and he had tears in his eyes.  He was scared and worried and afraid.  I had to comfort him for like, a half hour because he was so traumatized that he saw me crying.  Ask yourself, how painful is it for you when you see your mom or dad cry.  It rocks your world because to you your parents are the strongest people in the world, they are supposed to take care of you, not you take care of them. 

Mentally, I had to alter my concept of thinking.  I remember browsing Facebook and seeing how everyone would go out to parties, or go eat out at restaurants, or just hang out at someone's house.  When I first had Mateo, Joel and I tried taking them out to people's houses.  It was hard.  Packing the bag, dressing the kids, Josiah's tantrums, getting them in the car, getting them out of the car.  It would take us almost an hour just to get them ready AND ourselves too.  It's such a hassle that if we could avoid it, we do.  Mentally, I had to realize that I can't do that anymore.  I can't go out, hang out with my friends, or do anything with them.  If I wanted to go out, I would have to find a baby sitter, schedule the date according to Joel's work schedule, it was just nearly impossible.  Even for work events, all of the people, or almost all of the people I work with are single and free.  I'm married with two kids.  My mentality is different.  They only have to think and care about themselves and worry about themselves.  I have to think and care about two kids and a husband.  Worry about what they're doing, if we have enough food, what to make for dinner, about their sicknesses and their general well being.  I had to alter my mindset from being Mari, to being Mother Mari.  I am not me, or the me that I was or thought I was or wanted to be.  I am the me that God made me to be.

Physically, I am exhausted.  Two kids is definitely exhausting.  One two year old that runs around everywhere, cries a lot, is very picky with food, and another who is crawling around, shoving everything into his mouth.  Being a mother of two is absolutely exhausting.  I can very rarely sit down and just relax.  Especially now since they're turning 3 and 1.  It's tiring.  Now that I'm in school, and work, and being a mother of two and a wife to obviously 1, it's extremely physically draining.  By 9:00 I just want to sit down.  How am I going to study, and watch the kids, and cook dinner?  I have no idea.  I depend wholly on the strength that God gives me. 

By knowing that God is in control of my life, I am able to live through every day.  I depend solely on the verse saying that God only gives me what I can handle.  Throughout 2011 Me and Joel have sacrificed ourselves, our lives and our friends, for our family.  God has changed us 100% to view our lives as parents and not as individuals.  Nothing else matters except that our children are healthy and happy.  So yes, I have sacrificed my individual self for my children and my family, but I like the new me that God has changed me into.  I am not me, I am what He has made me to be.