and you have to keep up.
I couldn't sleep anymore and didn't want to wake anyone, so I got out of bed. I've been googling all morning for something to help Brian gain some more function/strength. As I was doing this I was thinking about how much our lives have changed. Not just since his accident, but ongoing changes. I think outside of anyone's family/relationships people assume other people's lives are better than theirs or perfect. I know I do sometimes. It's, most times, impossible to know the complexities in someone else's life. Never be too quick to judge that person's life. I have realized, more and more, through our experiences that, like Brian told our son the other night, "if you think you have it bad someone else always has it worse". VERY TRUE!
I know we have it good. In the scheme of life and important needs and necessities we have it all. I think others outside us would think we had a perfect life. For the most part, a quick judgement would make our lives look extremely easy. I know that others have had it much harder, but I also know the reality of our life and that it has NEVER been easy. We've had to constantly adjust to our ever changing rules in life.
When I thought we'd just get married, have kids and live happily ever after I was wrong. I would never say life is bad; it's just constantly rearranging my thinking, goals and expectations. The kid part came hard when our geneticist told us we would most probably not have mentally healthy children. That was a blow that changed the way I planned to go about having or not having our children. So, 15 years after she told us that we have 4 children. They were never easy to have, but we have them just the same. We just had to reroute our plans on how to have them.
When I thought we'd just have healthy children, I was wrong. I thought mental health would be our own real obstacle. When Cole was born with Tet, I was devastated. My healthy boy wasn't healthy. He never will be a perfectly healthy child. To us he is, but when you can't even get him nonrated life insurance you know society doesn't consider him perfectly healthy.
One more boy with a birth defect, subsequent surgery, and two adoptions later Brian's accident takes the largest toll on our lives. Our lives have been changed and rearranged for 15 years. We should be used to it by now, but you never get used to it since it's, obviously, never anything you could plan for. Not the stuff we've had. I mean, I can handle sick kids, multiple UTIs on one, annual heart care of another, the 4 surgeries between 2, the birth related issues of another and yes even the seizure, but Brian was hard. I don't know what it was about the accident; the threat of life, life as we knew it, being separated involuntarily? I don't know. I just know we've always been able to work our way through the other stuff with, relatively no issues. Maybe it's just because those other issues, though large to a lot, they weren't. We adjusted, we grew stronger. And while, "we're" fine, it's been a long road and we've still got some road to go. It changes the way you look at each other. Your dreams in life become different. How can they not? You see your spouse go through something at a, young age, that is hard to watch. Very few know the residual effects left from the accident. Most people assume he's 100% again because outwardly he looks that way. No one knows the hurt he has for himself or I have for him because he doesn't think he'll ever run again or have a comparatively normal muscle strength in areas he's lost. It's changed what we worry about, think about, dream about.
He's still new to SCI world. One year post-injury isn't that long, but when you're in construction and strength and movement is your livelihood, it's a tough one to deal with. You just want it to be a little more normal everyday and when it stops improving or is improving so slowly you can't really see it, it's harder to take. We work so hard at our marriage and kids. Part of all this makes us stronger, but I can't help but think part of it makes me weaker. I'm a worrier by Type A trade, so this gives me more to worry about through life. It does make us parent differently, which can be better. I just hope God gives us the grace in life to continue to deal with life-long changes such as the ones we've had. I pray He shows us what to do and others continue to give us the chances we need to make it and continue with lives as we knew them.
And I pray God gives others the chance to see past the outward appearance of someone's life and realize that no one's life is perfect and they are more blessed than what they think.
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