Juxtapose

So here's another thing. It's a blogging frenzy, I know. So many exciting things going on in life right now.

Today, I finally put in my notice at my job on the CV surgical unit in NH. I've still got my five-minutes-from-home, pays-way-better job here to fall back on, so it's not a financial loss or a decrease in hours or anything like that, but still.. there's always something about leaving a job you actually LOVE that's difficult. I spent my long commute up there this morning praying and rehearsing how to say things in an eloquent, appreciative fashion to my director. I knew all the things I wanted to get in there, my opening and closing statements, all the flesh in between, full of tidbits about how much I loved it there, all the characters I've run into in the form of patients, and how much I've learned from my Nurse Babyhood until now, Nurse Teenagedom. I feel I'm at least a very mature fifteen year old, in nursing years.

I had called my director a few days ago and told her I'd be working today and asking her if she'd be in her office today because I wanted to meet with her for a few minutes. I had meant to see her early on in the shift when I still had my coffee and bagel in me and before the madness hit. Seven hours later, after no lunch, no pee breaks, and turning over four patients total, I finally got a chance to talk to her. I walked into her office, composed and with my resignation letter in hand, sat down, and started blubbering and saying I'm not sure what. I think the fact that I was appreciative for the opportunity to learn from some of the best nurses around came through between the tears and the half-sentences, because she said I always had an open door to come back to. Other than that, I'm not quite sure what I said. Sometimes I can't make my mouth work in speed with my brain, which always moves along quite a bit zippier.

I love people. I will miss all my coworkers, my funny male patients who think they are putting up a tough front that all the little 130lb nurses in their twenties can't see right through, the unflappable CT surgeons who buy us all coffee on Sundays, my clinical leader and coworkers who cried real happy tears when I told them I was pregnant with Amelia, and all the people I've met along the way in other departments who I may never see again except by exceptional luck. I can't help but feel extraordinarily sad to leave. I can see why there are people there who have worked there for 30 years on the same floor, through all the changes it's been through.

Sadly, some things can't be held on to. I can't work there forever. Can't hold on to everything in my life that I want to hold on to through the many phases in life. It's the nature of life. Time to move on.

Yes. Mark bought me Radiohead for Valentine's Day... well.. their newest album anyways.

He always knows what makes me happy. I have simple tastes. I find it hard to branch out to too many different new authors because I have to read EVERYTHING written by my favorites. I can't bring myself to buy an album from a new band because I worry that it won't live up to the glory of a new album from one of my tried and true favorites. Am I predictable as all get out? Yes. Do I care? not in the least.

This is one excellent present.

You know you've been married a while when...

...You have Valentine's Day out two days early because you have to work the day after V-Day and don't want to be out too late.

...You have Early Valentine's Day (EVD) dinner at Chili's, using a giftcard you got for Christmas two years ago.

...You buy a router while you're out walking off the 1,000,000 Chili's calories at Best Buy.

...You top off the evening out by shopping for produce from the Reduced To Sell rack and...

...You are REALLY excited about the good deals you got there.

Now I'm drinking my green tea out of my favorite mug on the couch, getting stuff done from the comfort of my living room, and Mark's typing furiously next to me while he takes care of some weekday leftovers from work. Listening to the Beatles and Ben Folds. The perfect day.

How long can we be blanketed by all this snow and ice?

I'm sure I post this nearly every year around this time. February is my least favorite month, dreary and only barely halfway through our cold season. This year - the snow, oh, the snow!

I'll welcome you warmly, Spring, if you will promise to come a little early...

Today, I'm thankful that my husband still loves me. I read my Bible and these verses from Proverbs pop out at me like Bam! In Your Face! RED ALERT: THIS IS YOU, CASS! I've got a lot of those good Christian skills down pretty effectively. I pray often, love a lot, rejoice in blessings, and find myself squelching my pride at every turn of a corner. Then I come upon those Proverbs about the wife... not Proverbs 31, I'm good with that one.. it's the other ones. The ones about the wife being a "continual dripping," the contentious wife, those are the ones I make mental note of before continuing on in my studies.

Back in Bible college, an endeavor I spent three years of my life on, the topic of "The Contentious Wife" was widely and frequently discussed by all the men in my classes as a sort of joke, as the two women in the class begrudgingly  offered conciliatory laughter as acknowledgement that yes, we heard the joke, it's hilarious, and now let's move on to more pressing doctrines. Of course, back then, none of us were wives, and a few of us were Christian Feminists, working and studying hard and talking about marriage as if it were a highly unlikely occurrence. It seemed to me that the concept of a wife whining to her husband about something was not something that I would ever come across, mostly because I was under the understanding that I'd never be married myself.

Suddenly, or so it seemed, I was one independent half of a Two Independent Member Marriage, which is a nice way of saying that both parties are stubborn, each in their own way. Most choices have been easy for me to go along with. Mark has this quiet way about deciding things that makes it seem like anything I might worry about, any deciding factors real or imagined, have already been hashed out in his brain. The big stuff is always a bit easier than those little things that sometimes crop up. It's during those times when those little situations occur when I'm opening my mouth and saying all these things that I'm feeling my mouth move and suddenly my brain is flagging me down and yelling, "You are the contentious wife! Shut up! You're dripping! Continually!" But still I don't stop. Everything tumbles out. Likewise, I will be in the quiet of my thoughts, thinking through a million things, getting myself more and more worked up over something when suddenly, the peace of God comes over me and  the argument with Mark in my head (that hasn't even yet materialized in spoken form) starts to diffuse. I feel awash in peace, all is well, and I'm praying, Thank You! I don't even have to argue this out! I don't have to have this argument because it's only about me. Just in that moment, Mark turns to ask what's bothering me and my resolve is gone. Once again, I'm listening to the one thing I don't want to hear in that moment - my own annoying, needy voice.

In all these eight or so years that I've known him, since before I first saw him walking through the airport gates towards me, the only thing I can ever recall Mark ever asking me to change was my decision, at the time, not to date him and to stay single. I have never heard him ask anything else of me with such earnestness. He doesn't ask me to do anything better or act in a different way. He just listens and encourages, sits back and lets me do my everyday thing. I ask things of him all the time, tell him I have this need or that, expect him to be a superman on top of three hours of commute time and ten hours a day of work, listen to myself occasionally becoming the joke propagated by the overzealous wife-hunting bachelors of my Bible college days. I'm a work in progress.

In these moments, horrifically listening to my own voice saying things I know don't encourage, don't build up, don't strengthen my husband, I'm thankful for the Bible for the everyday reminders, even when I don't always make note of them with seriousness at the time I read them. I'm thankful for the forgiveness afforded by Christ's blood and Mark's gracious love to me. Mostly, I'm thankful for a husband who asked me to be his wife with such conviction and knowledge of my flaws and who makes it a point to never, ever make me feel like he regrets the decision.