An Emotional Day (6-18-05)…

Being a Saturday, I hoped to be able to sleep in and I was surprisingly able to accomplish this. David left earlier and kissed me on the cheek and forehead before he left. He always does that if he leaves before I am awake and it always means a lot to me. David was going to New Castle with Danny for the day to play basketball with friends that he ran cross country with at Taylor. Apparently, the New Castle HS gym is the largest high school gym in the country and the guys thought it would be cool to play basketball there.

Though many of the wives were going to be watching and there was going to be a pizza party following the basketball, I had decided earlier in the week that I wouldn’t be going with David. He agreed that it would be a good idea for me to stay back and just have some time to myself. I also felt uncomfortable knowing that the majority of the people at the event had no idea what is going on with David, Zoe, and I and I did not have any desire to explain the situation more than necessary. Later, I found out how good of an idea it really was for me to stay back. There were eight guys playing ball and four of their wives are pregnant. I have been in enough situations to know that when women are pregnant, the conversations generally revolved around pregnancy. It would have been just too much for me to handle.

Nonetheless, staying at home did not produce a happy day for me. I cried a good part of the day and felt pretty lonely and confused. The day started out by waking up a little later than normal. I decided that one of the first things I wanted to do was exercise on my elliptical machine. About halfway into my workout 2 things happened…first, Nichole and the kids left to meet up with Danny. I thought that would be a good thing and give me sometime to myself. However, the second thing that happened was getting a phone call from the Briarwood clinic that a client had paged the on-call therapist and needed to talk with me. I hesitantly called the client and ended up spending almost an hour on the phone. The call put me over the edge. I did not have additional emotional energy to spend and I felt immediately depleted and frustrated. I angrily said, “God, I just didn’t need that.” I resumed my workout thinking that maybe I could work out some of my angst. This typically works fairly well for me but today it really had no effect. I usually get my mind set on my day going the way I had planned and it just wasn’t happening that way. Additionally, I was feeling slightly guilty for not going with David even though he was supportive of me staying home. The irrational thoughts were just flooding in. I felt like less than a person and so confused on what my role in society is right now. I think about Zoe so much and the situation makes me feel so strange around others.

After finishing my workout, I went upstairs to eat and crawled into my unmade bed and sat there mindlessly playing computer games and watching Tv until David came home in the early evening. I talked to him a couple of times on the telephone and just bawled. I know that I sounded so pitiful. I felt so pitiful as well. David was trying to figure out if I wanted him to come home or if I wanted more time by myself to redeem my day and get a couple of things done. I really didn’t know what to tell him but I knew that it wasn’t absolutely necessary for him to come home. I just didn’t know if it would do any good to have anyone else in the house with me. David called me back an hour later and said that he was on his way home. He said that he had no expectations for me once he got home. David wanted to spend time reading and listening to music, which he has recently discovered are ways for him to connect with God during this time. He said he had no problem sitting in another room doing those things while I did whatever I wanted. David also said that he would be happy to take a walk or ride bikes with me if I thought that might help. I thought that might be a good idea and maybe the only thing that was going to get me back out of bed.

David arrived home about 45 minutes later and since his legs were actually pretty tired from playing basketball all morning, we decided to take a bike ride. I was fairly quiet and probably looked pretty pathetic, having lain in bed most of the day. David doesn’t care however; he has done really well accepting me where I am at. So we took about a 5 mile bike ride through some of the neighborhoods around ours.

I was a little irritable during the ride. At one point, David tried to make a sarcastic joke and I didn’t laugh at all. I told him that I just don’t feel like I have a backbone today. I talked about feeling hopeless lately that Zoe will be healed. I have been focusing more on the thought that she is just not going to make it and that has been really draining on me. David mentioned that he had been having more of those types of thoughts this week as well. We talked about how slow time seems to pass these days and how many different emotions we seem to go through in a week. Though still emotional, taking a bike ride was good. It was nice to be outside and be a part of the world.

When we returned home, I asked David if he would take a 30 minute drive with me to pick up a gift for my dad for his birthday. My parents were coming tomorrow to eat lunch with us for Father’s Day and I had been feeling guilty that I hadn’t been able to think of a gift for my dad for his birthday, which was 4 days ago. It took until this evening to figure out a good gift but it required a drive to the Anderson Starbucks. David didn’t mind. He was able to take along some new music he had borrowed from friends and listen to it on the drive.

We finally returned home at about 8:00pm. I spent a little time journaling while David listened to more music and read. It at least felt a little better to have gotten my dad’s gift and to be journaling. Before going to bed, I asked David if I could give him something that I had bought for him for Father’s Day. Earlier in the week, I found a framed picture of an eagle and a ram on a mountain with Isaiah 40:31- Those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary; they will walk and not be faint. I explained that when I saw this, it reminded me of a study I was doing after finding out that we were pregnant with Zoe. Since we began trying to get pregnant, I felt that waiting was a theme in our lives. I began studying different passages on waiting on the Lord and this is one of the verses that I came across. I told David that I would like for the picture to remind him of me and of Zoe, whom we have waited for so long. Obviously, I cried when I explained the thoughts behind the gift. David said that he loved the picture and I knew that he was sincere.

David prayed for Zoe and me before we fell asleep (just like he has every night over the past several weeks). The last thing I recalled whimpering before falling asleep was “I hope tomorrow is better than today.”