[originally posted to a blog I was trying out when I was going back and forth about if I wanted to do wordpress or tumblr and what I wanted my name to be, from May 30th, 2018]
I wanted to take a quick break from the absolutely insanely crazy week I’ve been having to make the time to start my blog, and document a sweet moment I experienced last night.
My husband, Reid, and I are moving into our RV this week, as in, we have a replacement roommate coming to take our place in the house and we have to be out Thursday night for new guy to move in this Friday, June 1. Anyways, super stressful week, but towards the end of the evening of packing last night, Reid kept bringing stacks of board games out to the RV that I had put in the maybe giveaway/sell pile, with this sheepish but giddy look on his face, and when I commented on it he goes, “Well I keep bringing more and you just keep making it disappear so I figured I’d see how much more we can fit, it’s like magic!” His face as he carried the games under his chin to me was so cute, and I got to enjoy a moment of appreciation for our relationship that I may not have had if I’d handled something differently earlier in the evening.
Before we started packing as we sat down to dinner, Reid made a comment that rubbed me the wrong way: “I know this doesn’t sound exactly fair, but I feel like I’m doing all the work for packing up the RV, and I don’t want to do it by myself.” In that moment, my mind immediately put up the defense and I wanted to spit back, “Well if you feel like you are it’s because you definitely are and you SHOULD be because you have 8 extra hours in the day where I’m at work work and then have to come home and do MORE work on the RV.” But instead of responding with that wonderful mess of a reply immediately, I took a moment and thought.
I don’t share this here now to be all, “Ha! I restrained myself in the moment but I can sneakily get my secret victory of a justified comeback via blogging,” although it probably definitely seems like that now that I’ve put it out there. I share it now to show how I try to take little moments that could blow up into a fight, and instead, seek for understanding.
My ultimate goal in blogging as a way to live my life’s purpose is that hopefully I can inspire myself and others to take the small steps towards developing more empathetic relationships – that I could someday have inspired even just one person to be able to more regularly imagine what it’s like walking in someone else’s shoes by sharing stories of what it’s like to walk in mine.
In the moment of thought after his comment, I chose not to fixate on my selfish defensiveness, but instead to focus on how he had opened up to me in admitting the piece that he really didn’t want to do it by himself, which he really shouldn’t have to at all. This is our new life that we’re building together, and even though he does have the time to do more work towards it right now than I do, I definitely have the ability to help out in the evenings as much as I possibly can. So, I stayed quiet at first, then verbally committed to working a late night over us eating dinner, and afterwards rolled up my sleeves and worked on packing up the RV from 8:30pm until past 2am. We ended up getting a TON done before having to go park the RV a couple towns over and finally getting to sleep at 3:30am, and today I feel better about what we’re doing than ever before.
