I struggled to open this computer today.
I didn’t really feel like opening it because I didn't feel like writing.
I don’t feel like writing because I don’t know how to approach what I have to say. I don't have ground-breaking dirt but I’ve been sitting on this topic for over a month debating with myself about moving on or finishing the treatment part of my life. Treatment was my Sushi. Before trying Sushi I swore up and down left and right and screamed it from the highest mountain tops of Minneapolis that - I’D NEVER TRY IT. Then I tried it. Then I tried it again, and now -Sushi- is my Sushi.
Treatment - and I can’t speak anymore plainly about this - is not stepping up to the plate and saying you’re going to better yourself, publicly declare, that you’re going to better yourself. Treatment, and going to treatment is a waiving of the white flag. Saying “there is something wrong with me. I have a major flaw. I can’t control this by myself.”
That’s the cold truth, that’s what treatment is when you're walking in.
Now, after, it’s a completely different mind frame. Afterwards is when you can smile and silently think - SAY WHAT YOU WANT, I bettered myself and I’m excited about it. It’s a great change! Because it’s only after treatment that you have the tools to view it that way.
Everyone should be required to go through treatment. When I hear “I don’t need treatment.” I can’t help but smirk, look up to the sky, and wink. Unlike me, you don’t need treatment for beer, but let me break it to you, you need treatment.
I can’t fully get through this without a comparison of what my life is filled with now versus what it looked like before Sushi. Excuse me while I touch on a few items before making my point...
I face the mirror each morning and notice more grey in my beard, less hair on my head, less money in my pocket and with less money in my pocket how can I afford to support a new baby coming in January, how can I make my marriage great today, and how do I beat the urge to buy a pack of smokes while everyone, everywhere else is talking about their fantasy football roster, Senator Akin and what's still on their DVR.
The last month has been draining. A new fitness routine has my body fatigued and sore, and I’m taking what feels like Mike-Tyson-in-his-prime power hooks to the face, daily, trying to get accustomed to a new job with new and different personalities. I absolutely love this new job, but sometimes change is hard.
Heidi is pregnant with a tiny baby that forces her body to change on her everyday and I’ve only felt bloated from lactose intolerance so I have no clue what "pregnant" must feel like. It’s so easy to forget to say something nice to help her feel better. I try my best to remember but I’m embarassed at how easily and often I forget. That is, until she starts crying over an Olympic commercial when a girl boxer thanks her Dad for his support, with a hug. Or during a Subaru commercial that features a guy encouraging his girlfriend, who's in a bike race, with cardboard signs. Or until she tells me she’s about to cry because -- I don’t know why, because she can, and that is okay with me. It’s so random and we always end up laughing about it.
You can tell me where to go if you want, but what I’m about to say next might sound absolutely crazy: With Cole running around like the playground is in the living room, and Lily scream-talking to herself going up and down the stairs as if she’s the railing, I can forget that my wife is with-child again.
Our baby fetus is now a little bigger than a bell pepper and Heidi swears it has balls and she feels like an overinflated balloon about to pop. She tells me these things and I try to relate by telling her how uncomfortable it is to drink milk while being lactose intolerant but maybe that isn’t what I’m supposed to be talking about. Maybe just a heartfelt apology, for having a wenus.
By design, Cole, is a handful most days. Not in the trouble-making way. Sometimes I think about him and I’m instantly caught up his whirlwind of endless energy, endless literal running across the TV room-into the dining room across the dining room into the kitchen thru the kitchen and back again-and again, and again. His endless hunger, his endless story-telling and it overwhelms me. He has baseball practice, swimming lessons, and to top it off he has bumpy speech.
It’s not his fault he stutters and my heart goes out to him. He’s only seven. He’s so little. The majority of him is still innocent and my heart cries for him when he stutters in front of his friends and struggles to get his words out. I want to talk for him. I would gladly steal a few seconds from father time to hit pause and tell people that he stutters and to be patient and beg them to be sympathetic, but I can’t. ...or I don’t, it’s one of the two.
Having a child in your family that stutters drains your patience. It drains your patience more than bad behavior. I don’t know why, I can’t explain what it is about listening to someone stutter that is so draining. People tell me that I need more patience and when they say that - I imagine myself repeatedly punching them in the mouth. Exercising your patience, or finding more patience when the patience-tank is empty is the hard part. He gets frustrated during practice and then gets snippy. When he gets snippy it's a domino-effect of cranky, snippy people trying to practice talking to each other. Speech class is every Tuesday evening immediately after work and it’s only then that all the hard work, patience, and self imposed practice sessions pay off and we feel good about the consistency.
Regardless of what is going on, we choose to be involved with him and we choose to continue to tell him that the living room is not his playground, we choose to calmly make him go back and walk. And we choose to practice speech with him every single day, twice a day.
Lily is already sixteen months old. Inevitably, she discovered that her legs can take her from wherever she is to wherever she wants to go in the house, including her favorite spot - up the steps - if the gate isn’t up. The gate, what a joke. It makes everything harder and ends up getting in the way. Heidi and I chase her down, follow her into this room, then check on her if she’s in that room and this involves getting up from the couch, stepping away from folding laundry, leaving the dishwasher wide open to grab her by the arm, lead the charge back to the living room, only to do it again and repeat the routine for most of the evening until her bedtime. When Cole has baseball, we take her to the field with us and let her run the fat right off her juicy thighs for the entire game, but that means one of us has to stay with her. So we choose to get up and we choose follow and we choose to direct and we choose to teach and we choose to guide and we choose to rest later. Rarely, she’ll wake in the middle of the night and cry until we choose to get up and get her settled back down. But when she do, we do.
Technically, and especially if we were a pair of the worst parents in the city, state, country or world, we don’t have do so much follow-up with these kids. Cole might grow up to be an okay person if we don’t model correct behavior and good choices every day. We don’t have to be intentional about spending quality time with him, we don’t have to listen or teach him how to be a man. We don’t have to feed him so much, we don’t have to feed Lily so much and I mean we really don’t need to feed her so much. We don’t have to chase her, and she might not grow to be an entitled-diva if we don’t show her boundaries at such an early age.
We [Heidi and I] could easily take the easy way out in all these areas - but deep in our bones, in the fabric that make all of us who we are, there is a sense of right and wrong, and taking the easy way out just feels wrong. James said it best, “Remember, it is sin to know what you ought to do and then not do it.”
Do I expect anyone to care about these things? No. I’m not throwing a pity-party, but rather, a comparison of then and now. These are the things in life I can worry about.
As tired as I am today, I’m thankful that I didn’t bail yesterday.
I could have taken the easy route through treatment.
I had read between the lines. I acknowledged that if I went to treatment I was going to have to go one of two ways: publicly answer incredibly hard questions about myself that I already knew but never want to be released, or continue to ignore them. I wanted to run and ignore. Trust me, I wanted to.
If I would have [run], where would I be now? Would I be typing this book and sipping a cup of coffee while listening for Lily to stir in her crib? Would I be typing this book and sipping a cup of coffee while waiting for Cole to wake from a long night’s sleep, recharged and over-anxious to start his day? Would Heidi even be in my life, let alone my wife?
I don’t think about ‘what could have been,’ and I raise my hands to God for the blessings that I’ve done little to deserve.
I will keep choosing God. I will keep choosing to be present. I will do the hard work because we don’t know what He’s doing behind the scenes.
When I started treatment I had no idea that the payoff was going to bring these kinds of rewards.
Were my worries worth the worry before the Sushi--
To Be Continued...
