Out On a Limb Together

Saturday is a good day to celebrate. When one of the kids has a birthday on a weekday, we usually celebrate on the following Saturday. We also chose to celebrate our anniversary on the first Saturday in August, instead of tying it to a numerical date. It was the first Saturday in August when we decided to make our relationship official, and Saturdays are great for celebrating.

This Saturday will be our fifth anniversary. I have now been enjoying Papa's company for longer than I spent married to my ex, including the two years I spent divorcing him. He has been around for about half of the twins' lives and 5/6 of M's.

For me, the last five years have been a long road of recovery. It seems that every time I think I have overcome the damage imparted by my life before I met Papa, I stumble upon another dusty corner that needs repair... another lingering weakness I'm only beginning to see the origins of.

Papa recently asked me if he should apply for this job he heard about in Denmark. The thought of such a huge change and unique opportunity made me smile, but I immediately began considering the consequences: Would I be able to continue my studies? Would homeschooling still be a reasonable option, and how would it work? What is the cost of living compared to here?

It wasn't until later that I realized there were a lot of questions I didn't even begin to consider, because I knew Papa was already thinking about them. And some of the questions that did run through my mind were things I knew he would have considered as well. In fact, once I was able to take a step back from my initial reaction, I realized that I felt no pressure at all, because I knew he would think responsibly about things instead of leaving that burden entirely on me.

When I met Papa, he was working for the public school system, doing tech support stuff. He had job security, decent pay, insurance, and a great retirement plan. He just wasn't happy. More than a year ago, he decided he wanted to find a new job, so he started applying for software developing positions. When he started really talking about accepting a position and quitting his secure job, I panicked. Would he get paid enough to make up for the benefits he would be losing? What if he got fired, or the company collapsed? What if he just hated working there and wanted to quit within months of leaving the job that had everything... except job satisfaction?

Talking with him about it helped me realize that I was projecting my working-poor, small-town, plains-state up-bringing on him. *Where I come from* you don't quit the job you hate at the manufacturing plant just because you hate it. You have insurance and a retirement plan and they're never going to fire you, so you suck it up. Because there aren't a lot of other options in a small town anyway and you've got people to feed.

I also *come from* a marriage to someone who didn't seem to be at all concerned about the consequences of his actions most of the time. We had no savings or emergency fund and he made decisions about his career and our lives seemingly on a whim without thinking about the future.

But I am not *where I come from* for a reason.

Papa took the new job after he reassured me with the safety net of making sure he could go back to this job with the school district if it didn't work out. But it did. And, since then, he has negotiated a raise and continued considering other jobs where he might be even more excited about his work, and I'm learning to be okay with that.

Papa and I have spent five years going out on a limb together. He is not dragging me along behind him while he takes unreasonable risks. We are walking, hand-in-hand into new frontiers, having packed our bags and planned for the unknown together. He is not going to blame me if things fall apart, and I won't blame him, because we are in this together and if things do fall apart, we'll be too busy picking up the pieces and building something new.

• Five years of healing
• Five years of ever improving happiness
• Five years of crazy adventures
• Five years of balancing caution with excitement
• Five years of working together
• And no sign of slowing down