Sharing the burden

Wow, it's been four years since I posted on this blog... sad. But not too sad, really, as I just had so much life going on. I deleted some old political posts that no longer matter (Fred Thompson for President anyone?) and am ready to start over.

So I became a CNA late last year, and after three months of trying, finally landed a job at the local hospital. Getting hired as a new grad is HARD, even when you are the lowest guy on the totem pole, wiping poop off of people and emptying urinals and bedpans. Yes, that's me. I am sure I'll discuss all those lovely aspects of my job in the future, but there is one thing that is really sticking in my mind about this new job.

This is the first time since I got married and had children that I have worked full time. To some people that probably sounds insane, but hey, that's the choice I made. I am sure that over the last 14 years, more than one person has thought I wasted my bachelor's degree...and maybe I did. I sure am not using it now. But so what? I got a good education and no one can ever take that from me. I have used my brains and my education to more good effect in raising my children than I ever could have in any corporate or government setting, and will continue to do so.

So anyway, here I am, working full time for the first time in a very very long time. Up to this point, my husband has been almost solely responsible for supporting the family financially and providing health insurance. In 2010, after he got laid off from his civilian job, he did this by volunteering to be deployed by the Army National Guard. He spent a year in Afghanistan, so that his family would be taken care of. (There is no doubt that I married a full-fledged MAN.) No one should ever think that I did not fully appreciate the kind of obligation he took on by being sole support for a wife and five children, but let's face it, I couldn't really know what it felt like.

Now that I am working full time, I qualify for health insurance and such through my job. Previously, when I worked part time, either I didn't qualify or it was so expensive I might as well not have. When looking at the differences in the premiums, it became immediately and forcefully apparent that the coverage from my job is a much better buy than the options available from his. So today I enrolled the family. And I keep thinking about it. And thinking about it. Over and over again. In fact, I procrastinated for a few days, because this just felt SO BIG.

Why? When I worked before, they were part time jobs that brought in a little money to help with bills and groceries. We needed the money from those jobs, but if I had wanted to quit for some reason, it wouldn't necessarily have been the ruin of the family. But now, I am carrying this family's health insurance! Basically, now that this step is taken, I couldn't quit even if I wanted to. I don't want to, but that's not the point.

I have always had certain obligations to my family, of course, but as a stay at home mother, they were the kind of things that were built into my days, or came up by natural instinct, anyway. They didn't feel like "work." (Well okay, laundry and dishes will ALWAYS feel like work... yuck.) But now, it's like I feel a weight on me. I always respected my husband and honored his dedication to and sacrifices for us. But I had NO IDEA what this feels like. How has he maintained his sanity when he lost jobs? If this little piece of obligation feels this heavy to me, how must it have felt to him to know that absolutely everything depended upon him?!

I have long known that my husband is a man of deep faith and quiet strength. And I have always loved those things about him. Because of the feelings I am having about this new step in my life, I think I will end up appreciating him a whole lot more. In a world full of tall little boys, he has always been a real man, and my life with him has turned out better than I could possibly have hoped. He deserves some help, though I know that he will always take the burden of being the rock of our family upon himself, no matter what I do. And there are no words for how much I love him for that.