If ever I wanted a Mulligan Week....

Prologue: I've had a few weeks of depressing posts. Anger, bad times, grumpiness. Permit me one more please and then things will start looking up around here. I promise. Because I don't give up. I look UP. 

I guess it started last week. Hubby admitted to me (through much arguing and yelling) that he did not WANT the dog. That he felt I had ignored his wishes. That I bowled him over and just did what I wanted. I had to admit that part of that was true. He seemed ambivalent. I should have realized that ambivalence would lead to problems if we got the dog. But we got the dog.

I didn't want to get rid of the dog because we were already bonding, he was good with the kids and I had made a commitment. But my husband had not, it was causing problems. We'd basically gotten the dog and found out we were pregnant in the same week and he'd tried to stop the dog purchase but I pushed on.

But over the weekend I agreed that we'd take the dog back. I spoke to the kids and they actually handled it better then I thought they would. I explained that family was more important than a dog and our commitment to each other was also more important. As a friend of mine said:

Look, to me, pets are like MATES. You can’t just have any old cat or dog in the pet slot----a good pet is a part of the family and they need a personality and temperament and yes, even stage of life, that fits in with yours. There's this sort of DEMONIZING of people who give up pets... like YOU SHOULD HAVE KNOWN YOU WERE NOT READY FOR A DOG NOW YOU ARE GOING TO HELL AND YOU MUST WRECK YOUR MARRIAGE OVER A CANINE. I think that’s crap and shows a lack of empathy for HUMAN circumstances. Sometimes a dog is the wrong dog, are you supposed to live with the wrong dog for 13 years, unhappy and stressed, because he looked cute to you when you met?  Please, we do not do that with dates.

I was having a rough week and a dear, beautiful friend (who happens to be a dog trainer) offered to take the dog back for me. I was not strong enough to do it myself and hubby would have given them the Cole's Notes version of why when they needed to know how amazing the dog is and how he's crate trained and sweet with children and waves and loves cats (but not to eat) and hardly barks.

That happened today.

What else happened today?

Surgery. Yesterday I started bleeding, not just spotting. I was in the late stages of the first trimester with #3.

Was.

I had a miscarriage and they had to do surgery yesterday to finish the job. Just a procedure, painless and simple. Painful and complicated. My husband had not been happy about the pregnancy. He didn't want any more. But unlike a dog, he couldn't give it back.

At first I didn't tell him. He was sleeping after his night shift so I went to the Emergency Room myself. After tests and ultrasounds and being briefly forgotten by the staff and shuttled from room to room to await results, a nice doctor (who met me for the first time as he) told me that the pregnancy was no longer viable.

There was the question of what to do, wait it out and risk infection, finish the job or finish the job somewhere else. I called my husband. Now, as upset as I'd been about the dog and our lack of communication and knowing he had not wanted the baby in the first place, I have to give him the credit he deserves. He was there for me because I needed him to be. Just like he was supposed to be. He didn't promise me we'd try again, he didn't say much at all. He was just quietly there. Which was all I needed.

I wondered if I should post on Facebook or Twitter or something, but as a writer I needed to process things first and then write it out. But Facebook proved to offer some wonderful words of wisdom. A friend was just diagnosed with breast cancer and she said:

God has a plan for my life and now it just happens to include breast cancer. Our experiences in life mold us into what God wants us to be, teach us lessons and how to cope, and most importantly to be a witness of His grace and mercy. Bad comes to everyone, whether they are good or not--and no one is good, not one. The... difference in someone with faith in God is that they have HIM to lean during the tough times.

I could say the same thing. God has a plan for my life and it just happens to include no dog and two kids instead of three. That is not such a bad thing.