The Bears

I grew up hearing people say, "God won't put more on you than you can bear."  While I believe this to be true, dealing with all those bears is no picnic! Being a young, new mother and wife has been the greatest of my life but pairing that with unemployment and being a full-time student proved also to be very draining.  Other bumps and potholes in the road of our journey didn't help either.  (Disclaimer: this post is not me complaining, just describing what life was like for a while).   Our move from Missouri to Illinois was one that we thought would be peaceful and good.  I mean, my whole family was close and much of my husband's family. Being near family was/is great!  It does my soul well to be around my family.  But our life at home turned out to be mostly chaos with a sprinkling of discord.  
My husband was working crazy hours (which he still does but they're much better) that called for him to be at work for 12-16/day.  ***Shout out to him for taking care of his family.  I think of it often that five years ago he didn't even know me and now we are married, have a baby, he worked while I had said baby and finished school having NO INCOME...at all, and I just recently quit the job where I worked for about six weeks because most of that money went to daycare and gas to get to work.  He's so supportive and I just love him***  Anyway, his work schedule left me taking care of the house, the baby (who went through three different sitters in a span of 8 weeks) and doing student teaching while he was away.  Student teaching is like having a full-time job that you have to pay for.  So, I get totally burnt out on washing dishes, changing diapers and writing lesson plans that I start to take that out on my husband who is paying all of our bills and is totally burnt out on not seeing his family and work becoming his entire existence that he starts to take that out on his wife...that's me :)  Okay so...we never saw each other and when we did, we either fought or were too exhausted to even speak.  Becoming destructive, we both would talk about how "I wish I could have your job" and "What you do is nothing compared to what I do."  Ummm. Yea.  Don't do that.  We were told in pre-marital counseling specifically not to do that.  We did it and...yea, don't do that.  We were forgetting that we needed to build one another up instead of making the other feel not as valuable to the team.  I mean seriously, who would have paid all of our bills while I was unable to work?  And Ben would probably be turning his underwear inside-out to have a clean pair.  We need each other to do different things or our entire operation would have fallen apart a year and 7 months ago when we decided that I would be his and he would be mine until a piano or anvil falls out of the sky on top of our heads.  
Two months after we were in our apartment, it flooded and our baby got sick because of it.  Several pieces of furniture were ruined and much of what we owned was piled on our kitchen table or in boxes near the table.  There was clutter everywhere!  It drove me up the walls to be living like that for so long.  To get out of our lease, we had to raise hell with the property management company who did everything they possibly could to not.  This little dance went on for about a month until we finally got a new place. 
Now that we're in our new home, many of the bears have gone.  There are still a few who live in the guest room and every once in a while, they come out trying to tear stuff up.  But we are strong and we will fight for our marriage to be healthy and our family to be strikingly upright. And let me just warn you. We will win!  Because God won't put more on us that we can bear.