"You don't always have to wait for me"

A couple days ago my husband and I had a huge tiff! It all started because he kept hearing "well we were waiting on you" or "couldn't wait on your any longer so I did it myself." I promise these were all said jokingly as I was super proud of the massive HUGE furniture haulin' around the house I had done myself. He on the other hand wasn't so excited to hear. It wasn't that he wasn't proud of me or glad that it was done. No it was more he thought we were attacking him. I can honestly say it didn't start out that way, but as most arguments go it definitely ended up there.

With the topic of "you don't always have to wait around for me" I came unglued! See we are family that live in a tiny 3 bedroom apartment with 1 vehicle! My husband takes that vehicle to work and myself and 3 children are homebound for 12 hours. That is barring it's bad outside, but even then there really isn't much to do around here. Anyways totally besides the point.

My kids like having dinner with daddy on the days he opens. Which means he gets off work at 6pm and due to drive time gets home at 7pm. Yes trust me I know that is late for dinner, but due to his schedule if they didn't wait to have dinner there would only be 1 or 2 nights a week they would be able to eat with him. When he closes he doesn't get home until 11pm. Well this particular night I had asked my husband to pick something up for dinner as our cupboards we were very bare and we were waiting for his day off so we could go grocery shopping. My daughter had asked for some hot apple cider and I told her we were waiting for daddy to get home. Not that I couldn't make her some before that. I was just wanting her to wait to have it with her dinner.

Well in true child fashion the moment daddy gets home she asks him for some hot apple cider. He too tells her hold on, for different reasons mind you... hands full, just walked in the door... catch my drift? She then instantly pipes off with "well we were waiting for you!"

DUCK!

That is when everything hit the fan!

He came unglued. "You don't always have to wait for me. You can do things without me." Etc. See what he didn't want to hear and what my daughter failed to include was that we were waiting for you because you had dinner! Needless to say his being upset erupted to me being hurt. He feels we wait around for him to do everything. That's partly true but not all entirely. See my kids also like having daddy be apart of the school projects. So they like to wait for daddy's days off to do them. The only problem there is sometimes those days are so packed because we finally have the car to get things done school sometimes get's pushed off those days. So most of the time daddy's days off = no school gets done. It's really a lose-lose situation here.

Anyways, I went off saying how they want to wait for him especially for dinner, and how because of his job what else are they to do? To spare all the horrible very ugly details I'll sum the whole couple day long Grrrrrrr-ness at each other in 2 words

Massive Misunderstanding

See it wasn't until last night that I finally understood what he was saying because truthfully it was the first time he ever calmly worded it in a way my "pink" brain could understand it. {If you have heard anything about the Love and Respect book and the Crazy Cycle you'll understand the pink brain comment. If not I'll have to come back and post about that sometime. It's enlightening let me tell ya!}

See I don't think that he was so upset that I moved all the furniture and had been play bantering "who needs a man" attitude. I don't think he was upset with waiting on dinner and the kids wanting to eat with him, and I don't think he was really upset and some of the school things that they want daddy to be included on. Last night he said this

"Sometimes it would be nice to come home and be surprised with things that you guys made or did during the day."

Ding Ding Ding..... lights went off and sirens... This is all that he was talking about shouted through my head. See it isn't that we never do anything when he is gone we just sometimes leave the "fun stuff" for when he is around. Not all the time and he knows that. He just says sometimes it feels that way.

After that comment I asked him "so what do we do from here." He said simply "We keep pluggin forward. We have come to far and I'm not giving up on anything. We keep growing. We had an argument so what. We move ahead."

We agreed and apologized. He went to do his daily reading of the Bible {he is reading the entire Bible chronologically in a year. Today he will have been doing it for 30 days straight. I am super proud of him. I haven't even done that.} and I sat down to read my book.

This morning though I woke up to my cell phone buzzing. Telling me "Hey it's 8 o'clock. Time for your daily Bible verse text." Oh God thank you for your subtle 2x4 of a reminder. I honestly needed it and thank you for it!!

Today's Bible verse is:

"Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance." 1 Corinthians 13:7

The growth God gave me the last couple days to today where I can fully understand and really appreciate this verse is invaluable information to me. I can't thank him enough for the lesson even though honestly it really stunk going through it.

I guess the point is that even though some disagreements can start small and get really big and ugly you can get through it.

Pray. 

Talk. 

Listen. 

3 vital steps that are worth a million. 

{This is the first time I am linking up with Women in the Word Wednesdays and iFellowship over at Seeds of Faith}