Lessons in Grace on the Fourth of July
On the fourth of July, my husband taught me two lessons on grace.
We all have unfortunate things happen that set us into a panic, right? Well, I guess the “panic” doesn’t happen to all of us. Some know how to handle their negative experiences.
I am not generally one of those people.
All it takes is a computer that won’t work, or a check engine light suddenly coming on,
or a little sore throat to send me into an anxious frenzy.
I don’t really have a good excuse for that.
For most of my life, it was my very forgiving, very generous parents
who would step in and foot the bill to fix the broken machine or send me to the doctor.
More recently, means have been found through working together with my husband
on managing a way to fund the solution to the problem.
Yet face me with an unplanned setback and I am still going to have anxiety attacks.
My husband, on the other hand, actually has a clinical excuse to panic.
He has Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, which he was honorably discharged
from the military for a little over 10 years ago.
I have seen it manifest, especially in the early years of knowing him (2009-2011).
He was new to coping with it then, and something like a car breakdown
would have made him shut down.
More recently, he has gotten better at processing emotions and fears.
He has learned how to find solutions to problems instead of getting heated or anxious.
Despite my knowing that he has grown and changed and healed,
I was still completely caught off guard by what happened on July 4th of this year.
Our day started normally. This was our baby’s first July 4th, so we dressed him in red white and blue and took him to the beach, followed by the neighborhood pool.
The day was going along fairly well
except for some bickering between us, due to being tired.
It was at the pool that things took a turn for the worse.
He and I were already tense, even though the baby was floating around
squealing and laughing in his pool float.
Then, my husband looked down and realized his phone was in the pool.
He had forgotten that he put it in the pocket of his swimsuit.
This phone, an iPhone 7, was specially upgraded to be water resistant
when he ordered it. Water resistant, not water-proof.
Last summer, when work sent me to the gulf coast for training,
he ventured out to the beaches and the phone got wet in the ocean.
It turned off for an hour, then came back on, miraculously.
I had a panic attack of course because I couldn’t reach him
to ask him to come and pick me up from training.
This was his second strike, and it was submersed much longer this time.
He picked it up out of the water to find that it was still on and able to function normally.
This was shocking, but definitely a blessing.
However, when he went to charge it everything went wrong.
It randomly turned off, then tried to power up, failed, tried again, failed…
this cycle continued for an hour at least.
Finally, he shut it off and that was when he began to get nervous.
He had hundreds of baby pictures that he had not uploaded.
A huge, dark wall of thunder and lightning was rolling across the sky.
We were out looking for something at Marshall’s,
since we were done with our pool and beach time.
He was not able to concentrate on the errand at hand,
so we drove half a mile down the road to a phone hospital I had read about on Facebook.
I waited in the car with the sleeping baby for a few moments as he ran inside.
Massive drops of rain began to pelt the roof as I looked through the windshield
at the man inside the shop examining my husband’s phone while my husband spoke to him.
He came back out to tell me it would be a little while,
so I drove down a winding back road behind the plaza to the back lot of Target
and ran inside with the baby to get a drink at the in-store Starbucks.
10 minutes later, when I was back in front of the “hospital”,
he came out and told me “I left it with him because he said it will take the rest of the day.
He will call me tomorrow. He may or may not be able to salvage the pictures,
the battery and charging port are fried.”
To be honest, the entire phone was underwater-
so if only two components were broken, that was actually kind of a miracle.
We proceeded to return to the Target together to purchase a new phone
from the tech department and set it up on a payment plan.
It was not how we expected to spend roughly 3 hours of our July 4th afternoon,
though the torrid conditions outside made it feel like we weren’t missing
any “fresh air outdoors” adventures.
About two more hours were spent at home, where my husband worked on
setting up the new phone and I played with the baby.
We did eventually go back out for a meal and to see fireworks,
but the phone was not the same.
He didn’t have his apps or his music.
He would stay up until nearly 3am, while the baby and I slept,
working out the details. It is much more involved and time consuming
retrieving such files when the old phone is not present.
The next day, the phone hospital informed him that they were able to back up his files
and also repair the phone for a discounted price.
I want to believe his many baby photos were spared
because of my prayers all through the day and night.
Where the lesson on grace came in was when all this went down
and when we had to improvise a plan.
When he saw the phone was in the pool, he seemed unnerved but did not panic.
I immediately launched into my anxiety mode, however.
First, I had a mini heart attack this is was my brand-new phone that still
wasn’t paid for that had made it into the water by mistake.
I was relieved when it was not only not my phone,
but the one that had survived being wet before, and it was still working.
Once the phone stopped working, both of our minds were racing.
Mine was immediately hung up on the disparaging feeling of knowing
he would be home with the baby while I was at the office in upcoming days…
he would be home with the baby while I was at the office in upcoming days…
with no way to reach him.
(Somehow my mind blocked out Facebook messenger,
which could be accessed from one of his many computers).
I was quickly leaping to different ideas for how to get him a working phone,
and I remembered the Target ad having a $150 gift card to reward anyone
and I remembered the Target ad having a $150 gift card to reward anyone
who upgraded to a new iPhone X and activated it in the store.
But his mind was tripping on the thought of losing precious baby pictures.
I did not know that he had hundreds more that weren’t already on social media.
This was the test, the moment of truth. This was the instance where in the past,
a fight would have broken out.
Where I would have gotten scared about money and started reprimanding him harshly
for his “foolishness”, like I did when his phone got wet the first time
and we were in a strange city, I was pregnant, and he had taken the car out exploring
while I was in my class. I regret what the baby in my womb probably heard.
At 21 weeks along, the app on my phone told me that he could hear music outside my womb
so there was no doubt that he could hear my anxiety-ridden, screechy voice.
If I had not launched at my husband and started a fight, then he might have
gotten angry at himself and started one with me. Somehow, anger at himself
sometimes deflects to anger at me.
“Why didn’t I do something?
Why didn’t I avoid the mistake?
Why was I distracting him?”
This time around, though he was scared to lose his beloved pictures,
he calmly went from phone hospital to Target
and replaced his phone within less than an hour of finding out the old one,
with its cracked screen, was damaged possibly beyond repair.
He was upset underneath the surface, but didn’t allow it to boil over like a volcano.
He didn’t place blame, he didn’t shut down.
He just accepted it and moved forward.
God saw his faithfulness, despite the fact that he’s had wavering faith for a year now,
and his photos and phone were restored.
But even if God had allowed him to lose what was precious to him,
he still handled the situation with such grace that I
have never been able to emulate when I lose something
expensive and important.
He taught me the beauty of not flying off into an emotional, irrational panic.
And the next time my check engine light comes on,
or a computer crashes or there’s not enough money at the time an issue arises,
I want to remember that lesson in calmness.
My husband’s calmness that day was only one of two lessons he taught me.
Several hours dealing with a broken phone may have resulted in a positive outcome (the upgrade), but it was still draining for my husband and myself too a little bit.
We went out to eat dinner and our baby son kept fussing and crying,
which forced us to take turns trying to soothe him while the other ate.
Then, we walked a few blocks down to the foot of the bridge that leads into downtown,
where we were going to watch fireworks.
The bridge was closed to through traffic and was full of thousands of locals and tourists
sitting on lawn chairs.
We found the base of a monument to sit on but our baby was still crying and acting tired.
He’d had a long day and little nap time through all the events that unfolded.
There was still an hour until the fireworks would begin.
I got up and walked around.
The baby was drinking a bottle of milk, my husband was playing with his new phone.
I went to take a picture of the boat in the intercoastal that held
the pending firework show on its deck.
I looked around at all the families that were waiting in anticipation.
The children were 4, 5, 9, 12 maybe older, maybe younger.
They were cognizant and aware of the celebration.
There were adults who enjoyed just sitting for hours outside on a humid night.
This celebration had been important to me.
Not as important as baby’s first Christmas, but important nonetheless.
I wanted him to see his first fireworks. I wanted us to be able to report on Facebook and Instagram that we had a fabulous night out as a family of three.
But I looked back at my husband and my son and I saw two things: exhaustion and frustration.
My nine-month-old baby was NOT old enough to understand holidays or what they entail.
He’s very aware and alert but bright flashes and loud sounds
might be more frightening than exhilarating.
My husband had been through a lot. This day was supposed to be fun…
but as any day that there’s a baby and there’s a margin for human error,
there had been setbacks. He was tired and grumpy.
He was worried for his missing pictures.
That was drowning out his sense of wonder about this holiday event.
I thought about him and how he felt and I thought about how this whole thing
was more for me and my desire for the family and friends on social media
to see the fun we have than it was about either of their wellbeing,
and I made a decision.
Quickly, I snapped a few hasty pictures.
One of the boat in the water, one of the baby in his stroller,
and one selfie of the three of us, all looking hot and frazzled.
Then I looked at my husband and said “Want to go home?”
There was still a little less than an hour until the fireworks would begin.
It came out of left field for him.
First, he questioned my logic because we had come this far.
Then he realized how much time was left and how chaotic it seemed
with this huge crowd around us, and how grumpy the little baby was.
He acknowledged his own exhaustion and agreed.
Once we would load back into our little Toyota,
which I had asked him to drive us there in instead of the SUV
just in case we needed to squeeze into a tight spot,
we would lose our parking space for good.
People were lined up around the corner with blinkers on,
hungry for a spot to park near the bridge.
Within minutes, we were back on the road, the baby nodding off in his car seat.
We were tearing off and away from the festivities.
We were one of only a few going that direction.
I had made a huge sacrifice,
one I would be sad in my soul about, even though I knew it was the right thing to do.
We sped down the empty highway, turned and began to ascend the massive bridge
by the hospital. The fireworks and the fun were miles away now.
I tried to take a snapshot of one neighborhood firework
that popped suddenly near us, but failed.
My husband knew I was disappointed to leave before the main event,
but his calmness earlier in the day resonated with me
and made me want to reward him by being calm during a loss of my own.
Towards the other side of the bridge, he spoke up: “I have an idea”.
The baby was asleep now, all was quiet.
He turned on the main drag for our town and began heading north, back towards the downtown area but we would bypass that to go home.
Instead of going to the highway that we live off of,
he turned and headed towards the other bridge to the north of downtown.
We would stop in a limestone and sand lot with the boat ramp where hemi trucks
drop off jet-skis and fishing boats by the foot of the bridge.
That was his plan.
When we reached it, however, it was full to the brim.
So he pulled along the side of the road near the base of that bridge,
where a few dozen other cars had stopped.
These were the wise residents who knew better than to get caught
in nearly two hours of traffic after the show.
From our spot overlooking marshland and intercoastal waters north of downtown,
we got to watch the better part of the show.
We weren’t right up close to it, but we took many amazing pictures
and then booked it out of there before everyone else would jam up the roads in their egress.
It was a compromise, but one I accepted with a sense of peace and gratefulness.
I’m more of an extrovert and he’s more of an introvert, so usually crowds don’t bother me too much. In this case, I was tired and I could sense his frustration so getting away from it all was a relief.
What he taught me on this day was that if I truly give up what is most important to me,
he’s more than likely to see what I’ve let go of and offer to meet me half-way.
He most likely wouldn’t have been if I’d made him sit through doing this evening “my way”.
It would just be a memory of things going textbook
for an Independence Day evening but being more agonizing than they needed to be
in our personal relationship.
Every time I’ve put my foot down about superficial things that could be compromised on,
it was hard for him to want to come my way again later on.
After a few instances of him pulling back from the direction I was trying to go,
saying he didn’t want to do the thing I was planning to do,
I’d feel like he didn’t care about my feelings.
From there, things would just go downhill.
The best example of this would be fall of 2015.
We had been married almost a year and a half and that fall held some very exciting events…
for me.
He was in classes and wanted to focus on those classes,
but I was hellbent that we would make these memories.
First, it was getting to go to a resort for my birthday.
It was only for two nights and two days, but it was expensive.
He pardoned this but was not entirely happy that I had insisted upon such a thing
when he himself was content just to have dinner on his birthday.
Next, my high school reunion rolled around.
He didn’t even go to my school.
He didn’t even live in my home town.
He was not interested in my 10-year reunion,
but I had to have my sexy new(ish) husband on my arm to show those peer kids,
who had doubted me, that I had turned out OK.
(I had a rough go of it with social skills and dating in my teenage years).
It was a trip for a weekend when he should have been studying,
and it was an event with a crowd of people he didn’t know with strange attitudes he didn’t like.
We wound up in a fight about it when we returned home.
The third event was a wedding in his family. An older sister was getting re-married.
His mom and dad expected us to go. For some reason, that past summer,
he had no issue agreeing he would be there.
Now that it was upon us, he was adamant that he was NOT taking another whole weekend
during his semester to travel somewhere and be
amongst crowds and with people he didn’t necessarily see eye-to-eye with.
This wedding was 80 miles outside Atlanta which meant a short flight,
a rental car, a shared hotel room with his parents for a night,
and a whole day of bumming around a Ritz-Carlton’s posh property.
(Rainy pre-winter weather would turn that property into a damp, chilly and muddy mess, however).
I just saw this whole thing as an adventure to be had:
a little trip to take together that was centered around romance
HAD to be an excellent bonding experience.
For him, it was multiple triggers.
I never thought about old unhealed hurts he had around certain family members.
He went along, we made the most of it, but after three events in just three months
that he did not want to have to be dragged along to (or pay for),
he was a little bitter. It would make for more arguments,
unhappiness brought well into 2016, and some awkward moments over the holidays.
On this night, July 4 of 2019, I broke a similar cycle of unhealthy thinking.
The baby slept through his first fourth of July fireworks show,
half of the day was stormy both literally and in a sense of unexpected drama,
yet this day will forever stay in my memory as one of the ones
where the storm had a happy ending.
The happy endings were the two lessons in grace and compromise that he showed me.
I will remember these next time something goes awry,
or I have to let go of a desire for something that I don’t need,
for the sake of his mental health.
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