Confessions on a low self-worth.

Today, I'm having one of those "man, I'm not worth much to anyone and everything is my fault" sort of days.

I just realized that I place a lot of my self-worth on whether or not my husband is home spending time with me.

Jake works hard. He works 14 or more hours a day, four or five days a week. He is very geared toward a strong financial future. I am more focused on relationships. Always have been. I grew up without much for money, but I had a really close-knit family, including aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, and of course, my immediate family. I lived that way for 27 years now, and so trying to switch my focus to making the most money we can right now just doesn't work.

Jake and I don't fight often, really, and we usually agree on most things. But when it comes to this work v. time at home thing, well, we've always disagreed. Not that he doesn't want to be home, because that's not it, he just has a higher standard for making money. Like, he has to make "enough" per day to justify taking his day off off every week. And if he doesn't, he works on his day off instead of being home with Spencer and I.

I appreciate his willingness to work, but I find that when he prefers to make a bigger paycheck every week than spend that extra day home with us, that I feel pretty worthless.

Today, he is working to make up for lack of sales or missing customers on Monday and Tuesday. I was looking forward to a little time for myself this morning, which didn't happen, before he left, and before he left, I started feeling really bad about wishing he'd be home, and wanting time away from he or Spencer in the first place.

I mean, come on, we fought for this baby, and he's what we wanted to so badly, and yet I want to be away from him every week? More than one or two hours once a week even? Man, I felt like a bad mom.

Anyway, back to this dissension. When we have the discussion that always starts out with me wanting Jake home more, and ending with if I want that to happen I have to make more money, but yet, we both feel like I should raise our child, so I am doing that instead, which means Jake will be gone all the time and I just have to deal with it... I always end up feeling like crud.

I know I shouldn't place any value of myself as to whether or not my husband is home, but yet, I do. I try to stop, and I can't. I don't know how. No matter how much I pray or give it to God, when this conversation happens, I fall right back into being not worth his time away from making money.

I don't know that we'll ever find a balance, and that scares me.

No one is at fault, but I tell you what, I always blame myself, which makes it feel even worse. I'm not mad at Jake, and I don't blame him for doing what he feels is best. I just don't always agree. I feel like even if we were to end up debt free in five years or less, we've still missed out on 4 years of time together since we were married, plus the time that he's away now. But what do I do? Do I give up on raising our child for a higher paying job, seeing as how that would be the one thing it seems that would bring my husband home before 10pm every night?

I don't get hardly any sleep. Neither does Jake. And it's not totally because of having a baby, though that's part of it. During the day, I don't/can't find time to nap, and then I stay up until he gets home because Spencer is awake a lot of the time waiting for Jake to get home, and also, if I'm not awake when he gets home, there's a good chance I wont' see him.

And then I feel really horrible, because I want him to spend time away from us in his free time, but I don't. I love that he's doing lights at church, but at the same time, I'm selfish and wish he was here for that extra two hours. But will I ask him not to? No. Will I blame him for doing it? No. It just boils down to the fact that I wish we had more time together as a family during the week.

So, here I am, home while he's working on his "day off," and my baby is crying in his bouncy seat, and instead, I'm sitting here writing this blog. I guess I should get my priorities straight.

Celebratory Episode of Epic Fail.

Last week Wednesday (June 23), I found out the sex of our baby! Jake didn't want to know, so I promised I wouldn't tell him, or at least try as hard as I could to keep him from knowing.

Earlier this week, I was the wonderful instigator of an early-morning episode of "Epic Fail."

Jake (my husband), and I were lying in bed on Wednesday morning, cuddling, taking in some early morning light, and mostly, on my part, avoiding being fully awake and trying my best to squeeze a few extra moments of sleep out of my morning. I've never really been a morning person, and much less of one lately, it seems.

For a few weeks now, Jake has been fortunate enough to be able to feel the baby lightly kicking from inside if he rests his hands on my stomach. Many places or people would say it's too early (22 weeks this week), but I know that it's true, because I have placed my hand there and felt it as well. So, he's not crazy for wanting to try to feel any chance he can get, in my opinion. (Sidenote: we noticed tonight you can see movement in there too sometimes, which is really awkward and totally awesome.)

Back to Wednesday morning, I was lying on my side, as I usually do nowadays, and his hand was draped over me and resting on my mid-section.

He said, after a short while, "I can't feel it kicking."

I responded, slowly, groggily, not paying a lot of attention to my words, "That's because [gender specific pronoun] isn't kicking right now." (Bet you thought I was going to tell here too, huh? Sorry, no such luck, still a secret!)

Immediately, or almost so, I started sobbing uncontrollably and buried my head into my pillow so he couldn't see my face. I cried and cried and apologized, and Jake just smiled and laughed a little.

I felt HORRID. Like a failure. Like I let him down and ruined the best surprise ever. He kept asking, "is it true? is it?" I finally mustered "would I be this upset if it wasn't?!" (Meaning, of course what I said was right and I'm ridiculously sorry for saying it...)

He said, "I think you're more upset about telling me than I am knowing!"

I eventually calmed down and apologized without sobbing, and he forgave me. Sure, he was bummed that I let it slip of course, but he said he wasn't mad at me for it. I'm pretty lucky to have him as my husband, I must admit.

So, the surprise, for him, was off, and now he too knows the sex of our baby.

While I'm still really disappointed in myself for letting it slip, knowing how badly he wanted to be surprised on the day of the birth, I am kind of happy about it now, too.

I was having a really hard time keeping myself from using the proper pronoun around him, for one. It was really hard to think of our baby as an "it" once I knew if it was a boy or a girl.

But more than anything, I'm really excited that I can now let Jake know the details of my dreams and visions. From the moment I found out, I could see our child as a toddler, chasing our dear beagle, Wendell, around the house. I could see our child playing with us at a park, going to family gatherings, cuddling with us on the couch. I was having SO much fun thinking and envisioning and dreaming about the future with our child, but I was really sad that I couldn't share these details with my husband, the one I wanted to most of all.

And now I can. For that, I'm grateful, though still sorry. It's quite the paradox.

Truthfully, I think now, Jake is kind of excited too. He can start piecing together his own visions and dreams of our future.

I can't wait to see what really comes true.


And Jake, if you're reading this, I'm still sorry. But thank you for being so understanding, compassionate, and wonderful to me. You're my hero.