When Life Isn't Always a Fairy Tale

As much as we all try, no one has the perfect life. There are perfect parts, no doubt. But no one person's life, as a whole, is perfect. The story of how Chris and I met and started dating is no story to envy. I'll spare everyone the details, but suffice it to say at 19, neither of us were short on stupidity. We dated on and off for a few months, and then took a lengthy "break". When we both felt what life was like without the other in it, we found each other again. We changed our attitudes- towards relationships, our education (we met at LSU) and our lives. And at 20 years old, approximately one month into our relationship, I knew this was the man I would marry.



Like pretty much every other girl, since I was a child, I have been obsessed with getting married. To me, there was nothing more romantic in the world than finding that one person we were meant to be with forever. I won't lie- I tried to picture myself marrying just about every guy I dated. I wrote my name with their last names, thought of the names of my future children, what it would be like to be a wife. But there was always something missing from every day dream, before Chris. Something just didn't feel right. Then, one night after watching the movie Old School and eating buffalo wings, I looked over at this college kid sitting next to me. Backwards LSU hat, T shirt, no grown up goatee yet, and he looked at me and smiled- the kind of smile that makes your stomach flip. I knew, right then, that through thick (it turns out I get very thick when I'm pregnant...) and thin, this was it. This was also the night he told me he loved me for the first time. We were so young, but so sure. He graduated in December, and I followed in May, and 9 days into June, we met at the altar. A week long honeymoon in the mountains of Wyoming, and then real life began.

Chris was working as an estimator at a construction company in New Orleans, and I started working at Children's Hospital doing three/four 12 hour shifts a week and working every other weekend. We were clip clopping along in our new life without many issues, aside from the usual adaptation to newly living together (Chris is very slightly OCD about certain things, and I'm a terrible average housekeeper.) We had our ups and downs, moved out of our tiny apartment and bought a house, I went on a permanent maternity leave and then shortly after we had Maggie. We were feeling great, and life was good. Pretty soon, work for Chris became monotonous. He enjoyed his job, but it quickly became obvious that he was itching for more outside of the regular 9-5 in an office Monday through Friday. Then we had a golden opportunity present itself for Chris to go into a completely different line of work. He was intrigued, I was intrigued, and a few days later we decided to go for it. Chris put in his two weeks notice at the office, and we jumped into something that was incredibly promising. We traveled (with tiny little Maggie) to Kentucky and Ohio. We gave it a year before we realized that this line of work was just not for us.

So, wait, what just happened? In a few months, Chris went from stable job with benefits to no job at all. You might think this is crazy, but Chris actually printed out copies of his resume and went to all of the companies that he wanted to work for and handed the Head Estimator of the construction firm a copy. 3 weeks later he was employed again. 1 year later, he was unemployed again.

In that year, we had Mollie, I started working as a nurse again, and we had just bought our first new car- a Jeep Wrangler. We were floating on air. Life was good. Very good. Then around 3pm, the day after my 26th birthday, I got a phone call from Chris. The conversation went something like this:

"Hey, I'm on my way home."
"Um, you're coming home early.... what's the matter?"
"I got fired."
Silence.
"Haha. Yeah right." (He had developed a bad habit of joking with me about this)
"No. Seriously."
"Seriously???"
"Yes."

And then I literally dropped the phone and burst into tears.
(Chris didn't get fired because he wasn't doing a good job. He was laid off along with 8 other employees due to the company downsizing. But let's face it. It doesn't make any easier. "I really like you, but ya gotta go" is pretty much what it felt like.)
I looked down at the girls playing on the floor and thought, "Oh. My. God. How in the world are we going to do this?? How could we let this happen?" Our decision to walk away from his first job was haunting me. I was frozen with fear. There was no way lightning would strike twice. There was no way Chris could walk out of the house and get another job in such a horrible market. But he did. Within a month, he was employed with another construction company. But there was something else this time. Something waiting in the wings, and it was much, much bigger than anything we had ever dealt with.

The month that he was home again was awful not easy. We were both on edge, and I was working four 12 hour shifts a week (thank GOD for my wonderful boss that let me pick up extra shifts!). The house was a disaster almost all the time, the girls were 2 and almost 1, and we were not in fairy tale honeymoon phase of marriage. We were bickering and fighting way more often than we ever had. Through it all, however, we managed to keep our faith. We knew that our hard work would pay off, even through such an incredibly difficult time. Sure we had made some questionable decisions, but hindsight is always 20/20. We took risks, and have both always been of the mindset that "you never know until you try". We had no idea how those words would soon come back into play for us.

Something that I never in my life thought about, suddenly became an option. Chris' grandfather retired from the railroad and his brother was also working there. He brought up the option to Chris that he may want to consider applying for a job as a supervisor with the company. I was 100% against it. I knew the secret. I knew we would have to move. AND THERE WAS NO WAY IN HELL I WAS MOVING AWAY FROM LOUISIANA. Period. But then, after much research and tense conversations, I began to bend a little. See after you experience the "joy" of being laid off, you tend to look at the job market a little differently. After a little more research, we found out that in the entire history of the company, they have never laid off management... well, that spoke volumes to me. And suddenly, a door that was bolted shut was now unlocked. We were open to moving out of the state. Never in a million years could I have guessed what was coming next.

About 3 months and 2 interviews later, we got the phone call that completely changed our lives.

"They offered me the job!"
"Oh my gosh! Chris! Congratulations!! Did they say if we had to move?"
"Yes. I'm going to be training in Toledo."
And, I kid you not, what I said next was no joke.
"..... Wait, Toledo? Toledo, Toledo.... Isn't that in CANADA?"
"No. No its not. Its in North West Ohio."
"No Chris, I'M LOOKING AT A MAP. Its like RIGHT NEXT TO CANADA."


But that was it. It was already done. We had committed to taking the job regardless of where they were sending us- and it was the best decision we've ever made. It turns out that even though we felt for a moment that we had made the worst decision of our lives by leaving that first, "perfect", safe job, it was actually the best thing we could have done. By Chris quitting the first job, we were led down a winding, crazy stressful road and dropped off right where we needed to be.



Our life still isn't even close perfect, but its our life. When he was laid off, we spent a lot of time praying. When we were so scared of moving, we prayed A LOT. I try not to paint a rosy picture of my life. I don't want anyone to ever think that we have it all together, or that somehow we aren't scared of the next step, wherever that may take us. After talking to so many people about our situation, feeling like we are the only ones to make decisions like we did, I gradually started to put together what many people don't realize is reality. No one has a perfect story. We kid ourselves by setting up the perfect pinterest inspired picture. We all try to put up a front, whether we mean to or not. We all go through hard times- incredibly hard times. I know that so many people have dealt with lay offs, moves, and much more stressful times than we have. Its so hard to remember that when we're going through a hard time, especially with everyone else's perfection on display. Its so easy to feel alone, like we're failing. Like no one else has been there. And its very easy to let that stress, anger, and frustration take its toll on your marriage. We forget who we're married to, and we forget who we are. Faith is what brings us through it. Faith is what gives us hope in darkness. And faith is what takes the evil out of our thoughts and replaces it with memories of our own "perfect" times.



For me, being stressed out and scared out of my mind, I had to look at Chris and remember the teenage boy I fell in love with. The boy who danced with me at Tiger Bar until 2 in the morning. The boy who could make me weak in knees with one look. The 23 year old with the big brown eyes who said "I do".




The boy who, right in front of my eyes, turned into a man, terrified, but so in love with his new baby girl. The man who held my hand as I delivered each of our babies, helped me recover in the days after, got up with me in the middle of the night for feedings.




That man, who would do anything in the world for me and his babies-that's what I remembered when the stress was too much. No one has a perfect life, but there are pieces that are perfect, bits of our own love stories that are amazing, and those are the times that get us through the crap when we feel like the shitstorm of our life has made landfall.





"Be kind, for everyone you know is fighting some sort of battle."