Saturday, December 10, 2016

Unplugged

Sometimes it helps me to put how I'm feeling into an analogy... something about finding the perfect parallel that is trivial and has nothing to do with the situation at hand, and yet compares perfectly to something that is going on in my life.

Yesterday I found a really good analogy for some of the ebbs and flows of marriage.

Hubby has been away hunting for over a week.  In the past it has been hard to be separated from Hubby for that length of time, but this year, with three little ones it is especially hard to have him away.  Then the schedule he keeps while hunting (really early to bed, really early to rise) has made it difficult to even find time to talk each day.  When I finally get all the kids to bed and have a moment to settle down to really catch up, he has been sound asleep for several hours because he'll be up at 4:00am to head out.

All that to say, by this point of the trip... when Hubby was going to try to be home to Friday afternoon... but now we'll be lucky to see him by Saturday afternoon, I can tell that Hubby and I are just not really on the same page.  Its not that anything is wrong, but we haven't really been able to talk -- like settle in to a nice conversation in over a week.

The analogy I came upon last night was that of a cellphone.

My cellphone runs on a battery, and every night I plug it in so that I wake up in the morning to a full battery to get me through the day.  During the day, I rarely let the battery get down to 30% before I plug it in again to have enough charge built up so it can get me through the end of the day.  

Hubby and I run on a battery.  We plug in to each other throughout the day every day in order to have a strong battery charge maintaining our relationship when we are a part -- we chat, we kiss, we hug, we laugh, we work together, we compliment each other, we stand together as a united unit as we wrangle our kids... we are pretty well charged most of the time.  In the past, when Hubby and I have been a part for a day or two, we run on a battery, but then we make sure to chat about our day over the phone, or facetime with the kids... we still plug in at least a litter in order to stay charged.

This week, there has been very little time spent connected or plugged in.  Our phone conversations have occurred amidst crying children and mostly centered around checking that the other one is still safe, and then we get off the phone.

I am very glad he is headed home today because we need to plug-in and charge our marriage/family battery. 

 

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