Our marriage has been one surprise after another. We married and had our first child at age fifteen. My first surprise was the day I realized that my husband was controlling and demanding. Life was not what I had expected with his hobby of drinking and hanging out with his friends. I found myself spending most of my time alone with our daughter. When things were good, they were very good and when things were bad, they were very bad. I had to except the fact that the man I love was not acting like the man I loved.
He was a good provider for a teenage husband and parent. He worked faithfully no matter how hard he partied. He was dedicated to taking care of us and providing our needs. When our daughter was ten months old, I learned that I was pregnant again. The news put another weight of burden on our relationship. This would prove to be only the beginning of our marital surprises.
When our daughter turned one, she became ill and almost died from Meningitis. This brought even more struggles to our already stressed marriage. By the time she was well enough to come home, she was a total vegetable and had 80% brain damage. Blind, deaf and paralyzed! The doctors gave us no hope. Due to our age, the doctors were prepared to take us to court to place her in an institution. Stating that we were too young to meet her needs and we had another child on the way.
We worked things out with the doctors to allow us to keep her home with family support and help. For the next seven months I spent most of my time visiting my daughter at my aunt's house. My marriage was pressed to limits of ending. We truly loved each other very much and wanted to somehow make things work out. By the time we had our son, we were ready to bring our daughter home.
Things got better for a while and then another surprise would take us to another level of marital stress. I learned that my husband had been seeing a friend of mine, which at the time I was the one who took her to see if she was pregnant. Not realizing that it may be my husband's child. Fortunately, she wasn't pregnant and we were faced with some serious decisions.
We decided to give our marriage another try with the condition that we would move away and start new. After the struggle of trying to forgive and move on, we finally seemed to be over the hardest time in our marriage. Of course we still had our handicapped daughter to care for and our son. We had little money and somehow managed to keep a roof over our head. I stayed home with the kids and he continued to work hard and party hard.
At age twenty, we decided that we definitely did not want to have any more kids. With our daughter's condition and expenses, there was no way we could have any more kids. We found a doctor who was willing to do a vasectomy and decided to go for it. Four days after his vasectomy, I learned that I Was pregnant...'SURPRISE'. We were in shock! It took us about two weeks to accept the idea of another child. It is, what it is, and we will make it work some how.
Two months later I miscarried. A few weeks went by and I was still having pain. I went in to see the doctor again and he felt that we needed to do some test to find out why I was having pain. They did an incision at my belly button and went in to see if everything looked okay. He said that I needed to have a DNC, (Dusting-N-Cleaning) as we called it. A few days after the DNC, we got a call from my father-in-law letting us know that my mother-in-law was in the hospital in a diabetic coma. Five am the next morning I woke up in severe pain and called my sister to take me to the hospital.
Before the day was done, I was admitted into the hospital. Around ten pm the doctor came in and said that I was bleeding internally and they would have to rush me down to surgery to do an exploratory on me. I was amazed; I didn't feel like I was that sick. The doctor was stern and told me that if they didn't do this now they could lose me. Everything was done in a rush, as I was prepped for surgery; I saw them bring in some bags of blood. It was at that moment that I realized that I might not make it through this. I can remember lying there praying, 'God, please take good care of the kids, give Roy (my husband) a loving woman to take care of them. Let him find someone who will be patient with our daughter and son'. After that I was out.
When I woke up I didn't know if I had made it or if I was in heaven. Everything was so bright and white. A nurse came over and started talking to me. I asked her if I made it, and she smiled and assured me that everything was going to be fine. I was so thankful to be alive and to have such an awesome family. I realized how fast it could all be taken away and how precious life is.
Our surprises in life have been many. Roy and I have been together now for thirty-five years. We have had many more surprises in our life since the last one I told you about. I have made many mistakes as he has too. We have grown to love each other and respect each other for who we are. Marriage, even with all it's surprises and challenges has proved to be a true blessing to both of us. We are happy and looking forward to every new day together.
Thank God for surprises and new beginnings. It is the surprises which keep us ever growing closer together.