Wiggle Room

I completed a very hard decision today.

Last weekend, my whole family was sick. And I mean, immediately upon the commencement of the end of Friday's workday, William was hit with a fever. Bam. Next day, it was George. Then it was me. Fevers, chills, sore throats, and general misery all around, all weekend. Fortunately, for me, I was next to last to get it, and I'd taken enough herbal remedies trying to prevent it that, by the time it got to me, all I had to do was sleep it off. But that made me the only person capable of sanitizing everything, laundering sweaty bedsheets, frantically lowering scary-high fevers with medicine, baths, and cold, wet cloths.

Don't get me wrong--I was happy to do it. If I am certain of anything in my life (ha), I am at the very least certain of what I need to do when my family's sick. And there is no greater satisfaction than being the instrument of their healing. Really. I wrestle often and hard with wishing life could have been different, specifically with regard to William, but taking care of a sick family is one of those rare difficulties that I don't feel that. I would be nowhere else instead of there, with them, until I see each of their sweet and perfectly distinct personalities slowly come back to me. I couldn't be anywhere else.

That said, my textbook stayed in my bag untouched for three days. Anybody who's ever taken chemistry knows--you cannot do this.

I returned to class on Monday fully and completely underwater. Now. It's not like I couldn't have salvaged it. I may have been able to blow off my visit with my parents this weekend--just send George and the kids and spend it working my tail off to get it together. But, I realized, people get sick. And not always on the weekend. And if you're sick on the weekend, how often are you better by Monday? And how often do you happen to be sick when you're studying the easiest, shortest chapter in the book? If any situation could be salvaged, this was it. But what's the next one look like? The fact is, we have no room in our lives for anyone to get sick. We don't have room for Nora to have a behavioral or social problem at school. We barely have time to complete her homework, let alone find some place to put it when it comes home. We have no room for William to wait too long to ask for the bathroom, for George to have a bad day at work, or for there to be any kind of extended family crisis that requires our presence.

I told George all this, and I was like, I have no room for anything unplanned. And I can't have zero wiggle room for the next five years. It's time to stop pretending that we're just a normal family. We're not. We're a special needs family, and those special needs are tremendous.

We sat on the couch talking all this out, and then, the truth was just there, unvoiced. Sitting in the room with us as large as the presence of a third person. I knew what I needed to do. It was the right decision, the only decision, but UGH. It hurt.

I thought of myself as a high school student, a college student. How I thought anything is possible. And not following your dreams is a cop out, a lazy decision. It makes you a sellout who will grow into a bitter, ruined soul. And I thought, too, of my father-in-law, who I've never met, who maintains to this very day that no person has any excuse for not doing exactly what they want to do with their lives. Want to be a professor? Do it. A lawyer? Do it. Just do it, no excuses. And I get that, to a point. But sometimes the cost is too high. He doesn't see it that way. He did exactly what he wanted, and it didn't matter to him that he ruined his family and damaged his two sons. They could have been damaged beyond repair, and in some ways, they are. It's miraculous that they managed to turn themselves into two strong men with functional lives, happy families, successful careers, and smart philosophies about life.

So I concluded, yeah. Anything is possible. But what am I willing to pay?

The answer is that I'm willing to pay with my time. I'm willing to pay with my stress and even sometimes with my health. But I'll be damned if I've got to pay with my kids or my husband. I belong first and foremost to them.

So I told my professor and my lab group this morning that I wouldn't be returning, and moved on to the advising center to withdraw from my class. The lady there pointed me toward one of their computers, told me to log in, and after roughly eight clicks of the mouse, I was out. That was it. I was like, "sheesh, that was easy." She said, "Yeah, it's pretty painless." I said, "well, I wouldn't say that." She didn't hear me.

In perfect contrast with signing up for classes, I left the building a pressure cooker of conflicting emotions. Hope, hurt, relief, choking.

I think of leaving that class, and it hurts. I finally felt like I could conquer the material. I am perfectly capable, in myself, of getting an A in that class. And yet, I've chosen not to. There's something about that that makes me physically feel like I'm being strangled. And yet, when I think of my life as a whole...well, you know. My eye, which has been twitching since August, suddenly stopped. I slept for 7 uninterrupted hours last night for the first time in months. I have an appointment in an hour to get the oil changed in the car, for which we're approximately 4,000 miles overdue. And I have time this week to make sure everyone has their t-shirts and shorts put away in the attic and there are sufficient sweaters and cords in their drawers. I have time to work on my column for October. I can think once again about how to vary William's diet, because these past few months, I've only been able to give him chicken, peas, and rice. It's dangerous to do that with spectrum kids, because eventually they'll decide that under no circumstances will they ever eat anything else.

I humbly beg you for your prayers. The task before me is to work diligently, faithfully, patiently, and prayerfully as a wife and mother. I have only ever failed at this. I'm trying again with no other options, which means this has to work. As relieved as I am, I'm somberly cognizant of my capacity to muck things up in selfishness and laziness.

Lord, have mercy on me, the sinner.