Making Time

Obviously you know that over the past few days, we've been trying to spend as much time as we can with Ryan's mom. It's important, and we want to do it.

But the truth is that we are also important. Our health (mental and physical) and our marriage matter, and we've been trying so very hard to be aware of that and make time to tend to ourselves so we can be a help and support to his mom when we're with her. It's like the whole thing they tell you on airplanes: put on your own oxygen mask first before you try to help the person next to you. We can't be the best support to those around us if we haven't made time for ourselves.

I also told you yesterday that I'd tell you about the God-thing surrounding this past weekend. Here's the story!

Back in December, we were walking through the hall at church, and one of the guys from our Sunday School class stopped Ryan to tell him that he should consider going to a men's prayer retreat happening in January. As soon as I saw it involved three days and two nights, I about passed right out. We don't do apart very well. But I also immediately felt convicted that Ryan should have the opportunity to go if he wanted, so I told him he should really consider it.

We talked about it quite a lot in December, but you know how busy December can be. Before we knew it, we were to the end of the month, and he still hadn't registered. The Sunday before the cutoff to register, he filled out his form and went to the desk to turn it in. That's when we realized we'd misread the dates. Rather than Friday night/Saturday/Sunday morning, it was really a Thursday night/Friday/Saturday morning retreat.

Unsure if he could get Friday off on such short notice (he usually needs 2+ months' notice to get time off) he didn't turn in his registration. Amazingly, he was able to get Friday off, and he took the form and the check with him the next time we thought we'd see the guy in charge. Only we didn't see him that day. Finally, Ryan said, "Maybe I'm not supposed to go. Maybe all these delays are supposed to tell me something. But I'm not going to cancel my day off. I'll just enjoy it."

And two days later, we got the call that his mom was back in the hospital. After a few days, he said to me, "I really wonder what God has planned for that time I had off for the retreat I'm not going to. I feel like He ordained it on purpose."

The night he would have left for the retreat is the night she came home from the hospital. We were able to use all those moments he would have been at the retreat to serve her instead. To pray with her.

That was a faith booster for us. Maybe it doesn't mean as much to you, and that's okay, but it was significant to us.

Friday morning, before we headed out to the cabin to spend the day with her, we carved out time for a breakfast date. We went to the same little café where we went for breakfast on our way to our anniversary trip. You remember that, right? We picked that place because we had a gift card and then we totally forgot to use the gift card?

This time we did better. It was a quiet morning when we arrived in there. We were bleary-eyed from no coffee consumption. (We accidentally ran out of coffee at our house in the madness of this past week. Don't worry. We're okay now!)

And then we scurried around town getting our groceries, because the snowstorm that actually happened was in the prediction stage at that point. I knew that whether or not it really arrived, people would be freaking out and buying everything off the shelves. I wanted to beat them to the punch. And we did!

We spent the day at the cabin, and as part of making time, I camped out in the beautiful loft bedroom, working on my laptop and doing things that needed to get done to keep us caught up and afloat as much as possible.

When we came home that night, I knew my body felt sick from being on the go so much. So on Saturday, Ryan told me to stay home and recover while he went back to his mom's for a while. I felt a little guilty for sending him out in the snow by himself, but I did feel better after some rest and catching up around the house.

We're learning, slowly, how to find the balance between making time for moments with others and making time for the two of us and for our individual rest. God is gracious to go ahead and pave the way so we have what we need when we need it.