Last night, full-of-surprises-hubman held his phone on his lap as I sat quiet…

breathing in the car. 

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“why are you quiet?”

“It’s just hard to stay in my happy bubble when I am forcing myself to talk about the hard.”

{happy bubble is how hubs explains my personality}

“I know…” he said and was quiet.

{and I wasn’t mad.  just processing.  My counselor *yes I just got a counselor for the first time to help me process all the hard we are talking about* said my biggest challenge in fixing my pent up feelings was to force myself to talk. The good, the bad and the ugly.}

In the counselors words he says, “Tell her it’s OK that she hurt you…”

hubz turns to me and says….”uhhh…hurt me??”

“That’s not good enough.” the Man sitting in front of us says. “She won’t do it for that.”

hubman clears his throat….”HURT ME..”

At this point we both started to chuckle beneath our breath. With all intention of not offending and balancing with our intent on taking this counselor thing seriously.  I looked at him kinda helpless like with questioning eyes and he said,

 “We are going to have to work really hard for a long time to get you to open up about how hurt you are, or when you are mad. You are sending the message to him that he can’t take it.”

He glanced at both of us and I turned back to hubman and he said,

“HURT ME, you can tell me when you are hurting.  I am a big boy and I can take it.”

It all made sense but upon arriving home and actually implementing it was a bit hard.  My natural tendency is to get quiet when I am upset about something.  By the end of the day I had vocalized every irritation the flew through my brain that I never give attention to.  Mack clean your room! Noo Noo if you whine like that again I will take you out of dance, Sprite remember to charge your kindle so you can read, Monkey stop spinning, Bug GIVE THE TOY BACK TO HANDSOME, Handsome you POOPED AGAIN?!

OK, so these may not of have the exact words, but you get my point.  I say these things all the time anyway but I was practicing saying everything.

I hate listening to nags.  Let me repeat HATE LISTENING TO nags.  I hear wives and husbands all the time complain and whine over and over again about what their husband or wife doesn’t do and it gets old. I would rather focus on the good. 

 It hurts my ears.  

By the end of the first day practicing vocalizing my thoughts, I felt like  horrible person and laid down in bed.  Tears fell on my pillow as hubby asked what was wrong.  The problem was nothing was wrong.  We had had a lot a really constructive hard conversations from everything from work, to the kids, and past hurt.  I felt like I was having to abandon my only talent, my patience…which of course wasn’t true but it felt that way.

I could tell how this would help in the long run but it wasn’t easy. 

 The counselor says I do it because I am “a protector”.  I protect my husband, I protect my kids, and I protect my family which is why when I went through all the hard things in my life, 

my parents and siblings had NO idea.  

*I was protecting them too*

Yes this had been a hard week, a hard month,  a hard six months, and hard 15 years of marriage.  Our anniversary is on March 1st.  Unbelievable.  We have had a hard and beautiful life together.  Our happy out weighs the hard and because we choose to remember our blessings even when we are frustrated.  Now whenever hubman thinks I have something I need to say, he yells

“HURT ME BABY, HURT ME!!”

somehow it comes across a bit umm shall we say flirty?

And we both laugh.

He handed me his phone and said, “I can’t stand it anymore….look at this.”

I grabbed the phone thinking there was some cute picture he took of the kids and instead there was a confirmation page of a booked trip to the Eastern Caribbean .  I was speechless, unless you count the very heavy tears landing on my cheeks.  They had a few words to say themselves.