There's Another Woman ......

There have been other women in my husband's life before. His mom. Our two daughters. The women our sons married. But this one is entirely different. Unforeseen. Recent. One who came without warning and whose presence my heart met with ambivalence and fear. 

Zoe. That's her name. 

She's been part of our lives for almost a month now. And I've learned to accept her. Actually, she is all her name says she is ... Zoe means "life," and she is just that to Wayne and me and our relationship. 

Before you call me crazy, let me explain ...

We had a scare in early September, you see. Had the outcome been different, I could be without my husband now. And I know there are many out there who have had to face this loss in their lives, so I am not making light of this reality or taking our own near-brush lightly. No, not lightly at all. 

On September 3rd, Wayne had stroke. It happened in the very early morning as he was waking, rather than when he was driving to work on the 24-mile-long Causeway Bridge, which could have caused a horrific accident and taken many lives, including his own. By God's grace, I recognized what was happening, and we got him to the hospital. 

Doctors aren't sure what happened or why. He didn't have the normal precursors or warnings. So far, tests and labs have proven inconclusive as the the "why" of the event; all the tests merely confirm that he did indeed have a stroke. 

One of the tests that doctors ordered done was a sleep study. This has been the only test so far that has had a positive result: Wayne does indeed have severe sleep apnea, also known as obstructive sleep apnea (OSA). He actually stops breathing over 30 -50 times an hour while sleeping. I knew he had some serious snoring issues, but....

That's when we learned that we would have a third presence in our bedroom at night, a CPAP machine. It was hard for me to get used to the idea of Wayne sleeping hooked up to a machine which makes him resemble an elephant. The first time he donned the mask, our dog Sugar had no idea what to make of it. She just stared at him, like he'd grown another head ... well, a longer nose, at least. 

I'd heard many horror stories of how difficult sleeping with these machines can be. Noisy. Mask issues. Frustration that could be so bad that it caused the OSA sufferer to choose to take his or her chances without it, rather than to endure the machine. 

And I made up plenty more of my own: 

How will we sleep comfortably with him attached to a tube? 

Will we ever be able to snuggle again? 

What if he can't adjust to it? 

What if he can?

Will life ever seem normal again?

A good friend of ours counseled us, before we even got the machine, to name it, for we would need to view it as a friend. 

That's when Zoe was born.

I am happy to report that there is life after an OSA diagnosis, after the addition of a CPAP machine to your life. In fact, life is really good. That man hasn't snored one single time since Zoe arrived on the scene. We can actually sleep in the same bed, in the same room, in the same house! Wayne isn't covered with bruises from where I've had to elbow him all night long to hush the grizzly! And we have a little peace of mind; we may not know why he had the initial stroke, but we do know that his brain is no longer oxygen-deprived during sleep. 

So I just want to be a beacon of hope and a word of encouragement to anyone facing similar life changes. Life is an adventure! Embrace it!

You Find what You Look for ...

If you've been married for any length of time, I'm sure you know by now that your spouse can do things that you find annoying. I mean, it can't be just me, can it? 

Let me give you an example. I've always been a night owl, while hubby could happily go to bed at 9 PM. I can be nodding off on the couch in the evening, but around 10:00, I always get that burst of I'm-not-sure-what, but I could stay up for another couple hours after it hits, no sweat ... until the alarm goes off at 5 AM. I guess God just designed our biorhythms differently. After all, variety is the spice of life, right?  

That being the case, it's not unusual for me to sit up reading at night, while Wayne slumbers peacefully beside me, quiet as a mouse. Quiet as a mouse, that is, UNTIL I turn off the light and snuggle down to drift off to dreamland myself. It usually doesn't take more than thirty seconds, a minute at most, before I hear that first raspy little snore. Really? 

I literally feel my entire body tense at the softest hint of a snore. My blood pressure elevates, and I find my thoughts spinning around at the injustice of it all.

I've been reading for over an hour, and you haven't made a single peep. But now ... now that I'm trying to sleep ... now you are going to snore. That's just great. Priceless!

I used to get so frustrated that I'd go and sleep upstairs. All I could think of was that I had to get up in "x" amount of hours, and I knew I'd never fall asleep with Mr. Freight Train next to me. 

We even purchased an expensive mouthpiece a year or so ago, one that is supposed to keep the snoring to the bare minimum, and my beloved is talented enough to have figured out how to snore around it! Yes, I admit that it happens only once in a while, and the snoring is softer than it used to be ... but it's still snoring! 

So rather than focus on the part about him snoring softer and not as often as he used to, I find that I focus on the fact that he is snoring at all. 

Okay, okay, okay ... I'm off on a bunny trail. This post wasn't supposed to be about snoring. It's about focus. 

God has been talking to me a lot about focus these days. And the awful truth is that if I am looking for something negative, I don't have to look far. There's always a ready supply of negativity available, most of it beginning right inside my own little head!

But I'm learning that if I will take my magnifying glass and look for the little nuggets that my Father puts in my path, I am so blessed; and those thoughts wrap themselves around my heart and carry me safely through my day.

I had such an experience the other day. My husband and I were eating lunch, and the restaurant was equipped with televisions. It was the weekend before Veteran's Day, and the stations were showing all sorts of ads where sports teams had made it possible for soldiers to come home and surprise their loved ones at the various games. Apparently Wayne had seen several of these reunions throughout the weekend, and he was describing them to me. I could tell that he was very touched by them ... to the point of reaching to wipe the little telltale glisten from his eyes, as he struggled to speak around the lump I could hear forming in his throat. 

I just sat and listened, touched by the stories he shared, but even more touched by the man I've shared my life with for the past thirty years. He is a family man, and his heart is wholly God's. His desire is to leave a spiritual legacy for his family. Nothing means more to him than me, our kids, and our growing number of grandkids. What an incredible blessing! 

And to think I'd have missed it entirely ... 

if I hadn't moved that magnifying glass two inches ... 

from his nose 

to his eyes. 

We do find what we look for. Why not look for the good? What have we got to lose?