Mr. Independent I’m Not

Mary recently took a trip to see her sister in Salt Lake City.  The timing was close to General Conference, so I encouraged Mary to extend the dates of her trip, attend Conference, and enjoy herself.  I didn’t have to persuade her much.  I knew she could use a break from being Mommy and that she’d come back happy and ready to dive once again into the bottomless pool of motherhood.  While I much prefer to have my sweetheart in the same state as I am, I admit I also wanted her to take a longer trip for another reason: this week alone with the boys was the perfect chance to prove my Daddy mettle.  Sure, Mary can withstand the rigors of stay-at-home-parenthood.  Well, so can I, and this was my week to prove it.

The plan was in place.  Mary left on a Friday afternoon and would return the next Thursday.  It was Conference Weekend on Saturday and Sunday, I was taking Monday and Tuesday off from work, and Grammy and Grandpa would have the boys Wednesday and Thursday.  Those first four days were my days to prove that I, on my own, could handle parenthood on my own.  The last two would be my stint as a working single parent.  I could do this.

These were my days to prove I could be independent.  God, though, had other ideas for this week.  As many other plans that go awry, they started in my sinuses.

The day Mary left I felt a familiar aching in my left front tooth.  It was my maxillary sinus, infected and swollen, pressing on the roots of my teeth.  Since this had already happened to me around this time of year for the last two years, I recognized what was going on.  No big deal, a few naproxen and I’d be fine.  I decided to wait it out, hoping that it would go away on its own.

It didn’t.  Come Sunday, I could tell that the infection wasn’t going anywhere, except, perhaps, to other parts of my body.  The first sign was that the left side of my face was swollen like a balloon.  (Unfortunately, Mary had the camera.)  Adam said to me Monday morning, “Daddy, your face is creamy.”  Creamy? I asked.  “Yeah, because cream is soft and puffy, just like your face.”  I called and got a doctor’s appointment Monday.

A swollen face alone wouldn’t keep me from showing my fatherhood awesomeness.  But the rest of the infection did.  I ached, I was tired, my bed beckoned, but so did my “strong spirited” sons.  My in-laws, ever astute, offered to take the kids.  Actually, they began offering on Saturday, when my face started growing.  I had refused, but by Monday, my pride was gone, lost in an infected sinus.  I called them.  And then I slept away the afternoon, oblivious to the sounds of Grandpa warning the boys not to hurt themselves.

The same thing happened on Tuesday.  I called in sick to work on Wednesday.  Thursday, the last day to show I could make it on my own, I had enough energy to get through the day.  Plus, my face wasn’t quite as “creamy” as before.  I went back to work, and like it was planned originally, the kids went to my in-laws’. 

So there I was, at the end of my week without a stay-at-home wife, and I hadn’t shown my independence.  In fact, I had shown just the opposite.  Or rather, I had been shown just the opposite.  I had wanted to prove something to myself, or perhaps to make a vain show to those around me that I could be independent.  But God, in his ever-creative ways, used this as a chance to teach me how much I need those around me.  I couldn’t have made it without my in-laws.  I would have been wiped out physically and emotionally, and I would not have recovered by Thursday.

The truth is, independence is great in many things – finances and national sovereignty, to name just a few.  But I don’t think that we were ever meant to make it through this life on our own.  We sure can’t make it through life without God, or rather, make it through life well, so he gives us friends and family around us to help us.  I hadn’t paid enough attention to this.  I needed a swollen sinus to remind me.