The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow

So, I've not blogged much in the last year, even less so since my mom passed away in February and I'm beginning to see that falling away from this particular outlet may not have been the best thing for my mental and emotional stability.


Blogging is cathartic for me. It's the way I 'get out' all the stuff I'm holding in and trying - but usually failing - to deal with. And the past year has been slam packed FULL of things that require dealing.


When Matthew and I became engaged last July we talked about how long of an engagement we wanted and both decided that about a year was right for us. We officially became a couple May 22nd so we were going to have that be our wedding date as well, which would have given us ten more months to live together, learn each other, grow as a couple and make 100% sure we were ready to spend the rest of our lives together.


Then my mom's cancer got worse and we - I - felt like we had to push things up to make sure my mom would be able to attend the wedding - which she did - and in spite of a ton of drama and stress from my family the wedding ended up being beautiful.


Let me start by saying I do not for one second regret getting married. I love Matthew with all my heart and have no doubts that I want to spend the rest of my life with him.


That being said - we were married in October then my mom passed in February and the stress of dealing with being a newly married couple, compounded with dealing with the loss of a parent has added an entirely new level of stress to our relationship, that to be honest, we haven't been dealing with terribly well.


Which brings me back to blogging. The only other relationship I've ever been in was with a guy who - in spite of his at times REALLY bad side - was my best friend. He knew what I was thinking without being told. He knew how I felt without me having to talk about it. He finished my sentences. Even if the issues in our relationship were 'about' him, I could talk to him without him taking it personal and getting defensive or angry. He could sit and listen to what I had to say and see it from my point of view.


Matthew, for all of his other many many wonderful traits does not share the same gift of intuitiveness that the only other love in my life did. And to be perfectly honest I'm having a hard time figuring my way around the difference.


One of the things that most attracted me to Matthew was his brain. He is fairly brilliant and has a knowledge base that just blows my mind at times. His thirst for knowledge surpasses mine and as I'm the type who wants to know everything about everything that's saying something. But with that brilliance comes a sort of detachment from the emotional. Don't get me wrong, he's not cold by any means. He is a very kind, funny, loving man - he just doesn't have that 'get me' thing that I thought every husband should have.


Maybe I've read too many romance novels, or maybe the one relationship I did have before set me up to expect things that were not the 'norm' in any potential future relationship to come. I just know that before we got married Matthew was my best friend.. and now... now he's my husband. And I love my husband dearly, but I miss my best friend.


Sigh..


It's funny how the process of emotional purging works. When I titled this post 'The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow' I had an entirely different subject in mind to write about, but something totally different came through my fingers.


I'd planned to write about my relationship, or lack thereof, with my parents as a child - and all of the grand realizations I'm coming to about life, and myself since my mother's passing.


Maybe next time....

The Money Matters of Marriage

When I was much younger - in my late teens and early twenties I was not very good at managing money. It's not something my parents spent any time teaching us about other than the constant reiteration of how broke we were - which was at times confusing because we were only broke if us kids wanted to do something. If the 'rents were up for entertainment fundage somehow magically appeared.

I started working when I was 16 and from then on pretty much took care of any personal finances I had myself. Car, insurance, gas, clothes, snacks, etc. If I wanted it and it was 'extra' I paid for it. And as I was guilty of the misguided notion of 'checks to write = money to spend!' I ended up paying for a lot of stuff I didn't have the money to pay for - twice.

Well once for the purchase and again in NSF fees which as you may be familiar with can easily add up to much more than your initial purchase once that 'bad' check hits the bank and a few more 'would have been good if not for that bad purchase' checks follow.

Thankfully the struggle to dig myself out of a negative bank account acted as a crash course in money management and I became very thrifty after that.

In 2003 due to the unstable and at times violent nature of my last relationship I ended up homeless. I moved into a domestic abuse shelter with my personal belongings crammed in my car - which had less than a half a tank of gas at the time. I had about $20 to my name and no job. But thanks to an amazing web of net-friends and the sheer grace of God I found a job, a room to rent and got myself back on my feet in a relatively short period of time. Being destitute did a number on my psyche though and once I was able to pay bills again I didn't take those responsibilities for granted or what having the money to pay them meant.

For most it just means another dip in the bank account. Another bill eating up your entertainment fund. For me... it meant standing on my feet again. That is still what it means to me today. I never groan when I get a bill, instead I thank God I have a home to bill me, that I have lights to pay for, and most of all that I have a job that provides the money to pay it all.

So bills get paid the day I get the bill or as soon as I have the funds available. Rarely do I wait for an actual due date to come before sending off a payment.

Which leads me to the real subject of this blog. The money matters of marriage.

I was 34 when I got married so I'd had many many years of handling my own finances and being responsible for paying bills. And over the course of those many years I have become a bit OCD with handling my money.

My husband (as I'm assuming is the same with most guys?) is not quite as eager to part with his deniro as I am. Not to say that he waits until the day before a late fee will be charged to pay his bills but he tends to stray pretty close to actual due dates.

When we moved in together and got to the point of having mutual bills we never discussed who would pay what or who's name stuff would be in. Well in the beginning he moved in with me so I just kept on paying the bills and just deposited his half into my account. We split the joint 'household' bills and each paid our own personal expenses like phones, gas, etc. And when we got a car together we decided he would pay that note since he would be the primary driver.

Well in February of this year, after work relocated us to Gulf Shores we decided to move. This new place would be our first home as a married couple. The first place we moved in new together where evey thing was equally OURS,  instead of mine - with him living there. And once again I just sort of took over setting up the new utilities, putting everything in my name and after the first month of bills came in I let Matthew know about what his half would be.

Over the last few months I've hinted that I'd like to no longer bear the full responsibility of making sure bills got paid and Matthew has said he'd be more than happy to help but (as I made sure to point out to him) not once has he come to me or had us sit down together for me to go over all the bills with him so he could actually take over paying them.

Of course I could just dump them in his lap with a timetable and say 'here figure it out', but I'm hesitant to do that. It's not like he's never been responsible for paying bills before. He lived on his own before we met and has had rent, utilities etc that he's paid on his own for numerous years, it's more I think that his lack of 'eagerness?' to assume the responsibility leaves me a bit uneasy releasing the reigns.

The last time we talked about it, ok - the last time I complained about it - Matthew informed me that no one told me to put all the bills in my name. That no one said I had to be the one to get everything set up and turned on - I just took it upon myself to take care of it. Of course I reminded him that I didn't recall him offering to jump in and do it for me, but like our previous conversations about money it ended in a stale-mate of him saying 'sure I'll take over' without actually TAKING OVER and me just continuing to do it myself.

So my question is this - when you got married - or to the point in your relationship where paying bills became a joint shared effort - who took over?

Was there a conversation about it or did one partner just assume the responsibility of collecting the money and making sure things got paid?

Who pays the bills in your house? Husband, Wife - and why? Who's more money minded? And would you be comfortable handing off that task to your partner if it's currently your job?

I think for Matthew and I it was a combined case of the bills being in my name first when he moved in and that I've always made more money than him so if we were going to be short getting something paid I knew best how to work my own budget to make up for the difference that needed to be covered.

We're pretty even now though on the financial front so maybe one of these days I'll get to the point where I can't stand to pay another bill and really just dump it in his lap... Then again probably not.

Ding dong the witch is dead...

So if you haven't seen the news tonight you will undoubtably see it soon enough and learn that Osama Bin Laden has been killed and his body is in US custody. And while someone being killed is most definitely not the topic I'd planned on talking about upon returning to blogging so soon after my mother's death - I think that maybe somewhere in this is a lesson - and perhaps a little healing......

Screenshot from CNN.com

I was watching a DVR'd episode of Army Wives and didn't even know Osama had been killed until I checked Facebook on my phone. The overwhelming amount of hoorays and joyous responses about Osama's demise prompted this post.


I will start by saying that the horrors faced due to the actions of Osama Bin Laden are unfathomable and I am most definitely glad that the immediate threat and dangers that Osama directly posed are over. But I do not now, nor will I ever rejoice over the loss of a life - no matter how atrocious the actions were that the person committed while alive.

I remember exactly where I was on 9/11 and how surreal it felt. I was sitting on the couch next to my then fiance (now ex) when his mom called and told us to turn on the news. We watched the plane crash into the second tower. I remember feeling tears roll down my cheeks as I saw people jump from the flaming buildings to their death. I started calling Red Cross and everyone else I could think of to offer my aid and see how I could help.

But what I DIDN'T do, not for one second, was fill my heart with anger and hatred and wish death on the person or people who were responsible. In those moments - I felt closer to God than I think I'd ever felt in my life and my heart filled with such a deep sadness, an almost paralyzing anguish over the actions I was witnessing. I could almost see Him crying, shaking His head and asking 'why'.

It was, I imagine, similar to the bone deep grief a parent must feel - watching their child go off on a horribly wrong path and knowing there was nothing you could do to guide them back to the way you'd brought them up in.

Though on a much lesser scale, that is kind of how I feel now - seeing so many people, both Christians and non rejoicing in Osama's death. Being happy and thankful he was killed.

While I don't always agree with the actions of our country, our involvement in matters that don't concern us, and are often not asked to participate in, I AM and always will be thankful for the freedoms I enjoy living here and I am most definitely grateful for the brave soldiers who volunteer their service and often their lives to fight for those freedoms.

That being said I cannot help but feel a heavy heart that so many of my fellow Americans seem to be so blood thirsty. The responses I've seen so far on Facebook range from giving thanks to the military for a job well done to all caps yelling for Osama to BURN IN HELL!!!!!!!

What he did and the deaths he was responsible for are terrible, so many lives were lost, so many loved ones living with missing parts of themselves. There is no question that his actions were those of an evil evil man. But does that make it right for us to rejoice in his death? Does Osama being a bad person make it any less wrong of us to be happy he's dead?

One person who commented on my post - the sister in law of my husband - and a military wife said that I'd feel differently if it was my husband over there fighting for our freedom. She said she was HAPPY Osama had been killed and blamed him for 'ten years of hell' that she'd endured as the wife of a serviceman. She's wrong.

Now I've no doubt I'm going to get a lot of, for lack of a better word, passionate replies to this, and will quite likely piss more than a few people off, but I am a strong believer in self responsibility and not blaming others and outside forces for our lives and the events in them so I wouldn't be me if I didn't say what I was thinking so here goes. Please know that there is absolutely NO disrespect intended toward our military or the families of our servicemen.

With all of that being said I ask this - did Osama make her husband enlist? Did Osama make her marry a military man? Did Osama make our troops go on a wild goose chase for WMDs and invade a country that we had no business being in? It was many actions of many people who goaded Osama into his war on America. Now please do not for one second think that I am excusing his actions - no way no how was anything he did even remotely OK in my book, but that being said I don't think it's OK for us to blame a crazy man for every bad thing that's happened over the last ten years.

The US is as I type randomly dropping bombs on Lybia - our 'part' in trying to help the Libyan people find their freedom. Do you for one second not think that innocent people are being killed by those air strikes? Women, men, children who are guilty of nothing more than being in an area of unrest - murdered. By our soldiers.

In any war there are casualties - sure the 'bad guys' usually get caught or killed in the end - but how many innocent people are slain along the way?

I have a friend who was an Army Ranger in Iraq and he told me stories of being ordered to open fire on shacks that suspected insurgents were hiding in and how after the building was basically shot to shreds they'd have to go in a do an 'assessment'. Do you know what he often found? Grandmothers crumpled over trying to shield their grandchildren. Mothers huddled over their babies. Oh yea - there may have been a bad guy in there too. So what - we say yay that the bad guy is dead and forget all the innocent lives lost?

There is NO loss of life that effects just one single person. Every single human on this planet is connected to at LEAST one other - so for every YAY we shout when a 'bad guy' an 'evil terrorist' is killed, we are also celebrating the loss of other innocents who were guilty of nothing more than being related to or living next to that 'bad guy'. You are also celebrating the death of someone who believe it or not someone else LOVED.

Some of the Christian's justification for their joy in Osama's death is that he 'reaped what he sewed', or that 'the wages of sin is death'. Some others are calling it karma. Most all are saying there is no room for forgiveness because he didn't repent for what he did.

I'm pretty sure the Romans didn't repent for nailing Jesus to the cross..... I'm also pretty sure He forgave them anyway.

'FORGIVE THEM FATHER FOR THEY KNOW NOT WHAT THEY DO'

So before you rejoice in Osama's death, or the death of any terrorist, or rapist, or murderer or bad guy of the moment ask yourself this - are you the type of 'Proud American' that rejoices in death? Are you the type of Christian who doesn't forgive a wrong unless asked? Or are you the type of HUMAN who feels compassion for misguided actions, for lives lost?

And what if the bad guy were someone you knew.... grew up with.... loved? Would you want others celebrating that they were killed?

I know I wouldn't.