Lesson #2

As I sit awake in the wee hours of the morning, staring down at our sweet newborn child I'm reminded thats it's been a while since I checked in. Life has a way of getting away from us and to say that the last year has been busy is an understatement. Being a healthcare worker in the post pandemic world is no slower, and in my downtime I've been sure to cherish all the many blessings that God has bestowed on me.

My last post was a reflection on my first month of marriage. Now 18 months later I've learned so much and so much has changed. We bought a house, got a dog and now are parents. There have been countless valuable lessons along the way, but the one I want to touch is accountability.

There are so many realms where is accountability is necessary in marriage. There is financial accountability, the accountability to share the workload in the home and there is emotional accountability. My husband and I have navigated each of these in some way since getting married.

Financial accountability is understanding that we each have a financial role and contribution in our marriage and in our home. We split our costs according to what works best for us and we each know that we are responsible for our share. Being accountable in this matter means we know that our assigned expenses are paid so that we never come up short. It also means that we support each other if an unexpected expense arises. Finances were not a topic of concern as we did our premarital counseling, not because there was no reason to discuss but out of respect we keep those discussions to ourselves. It's no one's business but ours to know each other's financial situation - not our parents, not our siblings, not the strangers on the street or our friends. We created a plan at the beginning of our marriage of how to approach expenses so that we could live the most debt free life possible. Life still throws curveballs but it's our accountability in this realm that keeps us steady when they come.

Sharing the workload at home is so important. We each work full time and often want to rest when we are home but if we did that all the time we would never have a presentable house. The thing we've done to ensure that is not the case is working with our strengths. I can stand doing laundry, but I love to fold it. So that's our deal. He washes and I fold and put away. We both love to cook, so we have a schedule. I will sweep, mop, scrub and fo all the cleaning around the house but I cannot scrub a toilet to save my life, or at least I don't do it well. Sharing and supporting one another in the day to day tasks build a team and a stronger marriage than the expectation that only one person can do the work.

Finally, emotional accountability. We've both known since day 1 that we do poorly as communicating our emotions. Admittedly I'm worse at that than my husband due to my perception that emotions make me weak. We have obviously dealt with a lot of change over the last 18 months, which can cause plenty of emotions. Checking in has been so important. Pregnancy and postpartum was a huge concern for me as hormones can do some wild things. I was blessed, for the most part, I was a pretty emotionally stable pregnant lady, the last month was a bit more of a challenge but overall great. In the postpartum, I was worried I'd develop postpartum depression which thankfully has not even been of the slightest concern. That said, parenthood can be a lot some days for the emotions to bare - we have been emotionally accountable to one another to check in on how each other is doing. I learned at my hospital discharge that men can also get postpartum depression, and my husband had so many of the risk factors due to my labour, and the significant change of a new child. We have navigated these first 6 weeks well and if we weren't a well oiled machine before, we are certainly headed to being one.

So that's lesson #2 to be accountable. We are still far from perfect but if we made our marriage about "me, me, me" then I'm sure it would be more of a challenge.