A husband full of surprises

I was reminded in a big way this weekend what a wonderful gift the Lord gave to me when I married Darin. For those of you who might remember, I sort of had an emotional meltdown this last week. A big part of it is me not knowing how to deal with the extra emotions that have been dumped into my lap as a result of tons of hormones rushing through my body. Another part of it was a genuine, serious sadness.

Let me explain. I have been blessed with the opportunity to stay home with Zoe full time. I love it..love spending time with her, teaching her, and watching her grow. Last year, I was a part of a lot of different groups that met anywhere from once a month to once a week. I had my MOPS group (mothers of preschoolers), my tennis team, my bible study, my bunco group, and our small group at church. In other words, I had a lot of things that kept me interacting with people my age...lots of things that I looked forward to during my weeks. Most didn't take much time away from my family, but it gave me a chance to get out of the house and get some much needed "me" time with other women or couples. This year, no tennis team (due to being preggo), no MOPS (no coordinator), and no bible study (runs into Zoe's nap time). I still have bunco, but that's only once each month. And small groups are on Sunday nights and are just getting started back up again. But take away 75% of the things that I looked forward to and you have a key to the door of loneliness.

So this week, I just broke down into sobs. I had held it in for about a month b/c I felt so selfish over the whole issue...and truthfully, I didn't understand that it was the interaction I was missing until last week. I just thought I was "getting bored" staying home...not the case. I just get so lonely during the day when the only person I have to talk with face to face on a regular basis is my 14 month old who converses about shoose (shoes) and baas (balls) all day long. So through my tears, my husband heard my need to "get away" and to have some interaction without Zoe tugging on my leg going "mama mama mama". He planned a night of "surprises" without my knowledge.

So to my surprise, he planned everything from what we were going to do to the babysitter coming to watch Zoe. Our babysitter, Brandi, is one of the college nursery workers at the church. She and Zoe clicked from day one and she's always been willing to come watch Zoe for however long. She was needing to do some video taping for a class project at school, so she chose to just do it while she was out our home. I was only informed of the project, not the date. Darin told me that Brandi needed to tape Zoe for a class project at school and that she was going to come over Saturday afternoon to do it. He sneaked in one other comment by saying that she was coming over during Zoe's afternoon nap so he could take me to show me something.

I thought absolutely nothing of it. So when he got on the interstate to head out of town, I knew something was up. Turned out that he was taking me to see Fireproof (the new movie starring Kirk Cameron) out to dinner, and for ice cream at my favorite ice cream place. What an amazing guy. It was sooo nice just to be able to spend a few hours alone with him. I love our little girl, but we just haven't had enough date nights since she was born. He's pulled a few sweet small surprises on me, but the last big surprise he did was plan our honeymoon and not let me in on any of the plans. I didn't know we were going to Cancun until we got to the airport the morning following our wedding. Though this wasn't nearly as "big" as a 5 day trip to Cancun, the way he went about planning Saturday night rated way up there on my chart. He really hit the spot and made me feel so special!