Some would say that Unveiled Wife and I are crazy for leaving our town for 28 days during the nicest month of the year with our 20 month old. We spent those days flying around the country landing in 6 different cities to visit her publisher as well as 3 conferences that she had been craving to go to for a couple years now. My wife and I are no strangers to traveling and actually really enjoy it; Africa, South America, Canada, 2 cross country road trips, up and down both coasts and handful of other little adventures. All this to say, traveling is in our DNA.
We had a lot of fun and our son did awesome sleeping on every flight except for one and never had any issues with jet lag even though we stayed in every time zone.
I had been on baby duty for every conference Jennifer attended and at the end of the trip I was having a little bit of an emotional breakdown, I’m not proud of this, but its true. During a conversation we had right before bed I told Jennifer that I was done with the traveling and couldn’t wait to get home. She then ask me, in a semi-bothered tone, if I could pray about my attitude to not be negative in any way because she didn’t want to go home with a negative experience after having such a good trip. What I heard was “please suck it up, you’re putting a damper on my experience here”.
This really hurt me!
In my already fragile and emotional state my wife had the audacity to tell me to get over it because I was risking her “good time”. I told her that it hurt me that she couldn’t see what I was saying for what it was. I wasn’t at all trying to make the entire trip sound bad. I actually really enjoyed it but was simply ready to go home. She quickly apologized and we were able to talk about it more.
Later on I realized that I do this exact same thing to her. When she is emotionally fragile I tend to become bothered by her weakness and try and adjust her attitude, usually not for her sake but for mine.
I thought to myself,
So This Is What My Wife Feels When I Do This To Her.
God is good this way, that he allows us to experience things that teach us to have empathy for others – especially with our wives. There are going to be times that my wife simply needs me to listen and validate her feelings and I will need the same at times. If we can learn to identify these situations and allow God to teach us how to respond we will have a lot more grace for each other.
What are some situations that God has allowed you to walk in your wife’s shoes?
And what did you learn from it?