Starting the Repairs

Things going fairly smoothly right now.  Keeping busy with summer activities, and enjoying the nice weather before it is gone in the blink of an eye.  Struggling to plan and pay for a visit to see my husband sometime next month.  His parents promised to visit him this past weekend but cancelled at the last minute.  I did not put much faith in them stopping in to see him but still felt bad for him none the less when they cancelled.  What kind of parents can find something better to do than visit their own son at least once a year?  It would take an act of nature to keep me away from my children.

My husband finally responded to my request for an accounting of the things he has done against our family which landed him where he is now.  In his response, he has opened up a dialogue for us to share thoughts, feelings and ideas about what happened and why.  In that, we are trying to work out where to go from here.  He currently is not eligible for any counseling, and based on what he has learned, he is not sure he would partake of it anyway since everything inmates say becomes part of their permanent file.  Nothing is private.  This is our opportunity to begin to repair and understand all the damage that has been done to our family by his choices. 

Communication has always been a short fall for my husband so this is a very difficult thing for him to work on, yet being able to put it on paper and not directly to my face may make it easier to put his real thoughts down.  There has been some yelling, (as much as you can yell on paper) but has been well received by both with an open mind.  Not saying that this will solve all the issues that are floating out there and that when he comes home there still won't be a huge amount of work to do but hopefully it is a foundation to continue to build on.

We have a large amount of time to work through everything, which is good, because in translation and putting your thoughts and questions on paper is subject to interpretation.  What I may want him to focus on, he focuses on something completely different, so in the time we have, we may eventually get through everything we want to and need to.  Nothing says everything needs to be solved right away, in that way time is on our side.

Making the best of what we have been given has become a goal, and a necessity.  Finding joy in the sunshine and the smile on the faces of the children and in a quick 15 minute phone call, that is a special gift I have learned in all of this.  Joy is in the small things that are around us every day, they are there but some people do not every stop long enough to see them.