Unexpected...

In the first month of our marriage, we got our car stolen, I graduated from seminary, we went on our honeymoon, moved to Kansas and both started new jobs. Talk about transition! We felt like we tried to cram every major life change that we could into a 30 day span. The only thing that made it possible is that (with the exception of the stolen car which technically happened the day before our wedding with the marriage certificate inside) we knew all of the transitions were coming and were able to prepare for them. Or so we thought. As it happened, one of the biggest transitions for us was one we didn’t even know about: the cultural transition from the South to the Midwest. Neither of us had lived outside the South (I grew up in Texas and Margaret grew up in Georgia), so we simply didn’t know that people from the Midwest are just different than people from the South (not placing any value judgement). It seems that no matter how well we prepare for “the next step,” there’s always something (big) that we find ourselves ill-equipped to deal with.
During these first 18 days of parenthood, we’ve encountered a lot of challenges that we expected: lack of sleep, problems feeding, the disorienting effects of not being on a schedule, etc. However just like 3 years ago, there’s a major challenge for which we find ourselves completely unprepared: the frustration that comes along with being a parent. To be perfectly honest, there’s a lot about being a parent that frustrates the heck out of us. It’s not that we didn’t see the challenges coming; we read enough and talked to enough parents to know that this wasn’t going to be all peaches and cream. I figured that any small amount of frustration we might experience would be so overpowered by our love for Charlotte that we wouldn’t even notice a sense of frustration. I was wrong. I feel more than a little guilty saying that. It’s not (of course) that we don’t love her more than anything on earth, but when you don’t know why your child is crying hysterically or when you can’t get her to fall asleep or when she seems so hungry yet unwilling to eat, you can’t help but feel frustrated. It’s a frustration born out of love, but frustration nonetheless. Patience has never really been one of my virtues, but I think it’s about to be.