Where I have been for the last year:

[Jack_Three_Beans]

So here is the deal:

I’ve been gone for about a year, it’s been a very rough year. I needed to focus on myself, family and my job.

Last October 28th, my lower body decided to stop working. I had (basically) and aneurism in my spine. A vein blew up like a balloon and pinched off blood supply to my nerves in my lower body, it is called a Dural Arterial Venous Fistual…gesundheit if you said that out loud.

During this time in the hospital my oldest boy decided to rebel. He decided not to come home stay out and live with friends, steal stuff, break into cars, and break curfew…, awesome.

I was in the hospital for a month and a half. Had a chair lift installed in my house, learned how to move, how to do everything in a wheel chair, learned how to dress myself without moving my leg, how to take a shower sitting down , I started going back to work.

It was also during this time that my oldest boy was now going to be a dad as well, my 16 year old boy who couldn’t remember to turn in his homework when he went to school was going to be responsible for a child…

A month later with an MRI, We find out that the glue used to ‘fix’ the Dural Arterial Venous Fistual, didn’t catch all the intakes to the vein. Now I need real surgery, cut open my back saw away some of my spine and cauterize any spot that shows up on multiple angiograms…

I was out of it for 2 days.

I was so tore up and hurt that I lost all my progress I had to relearn everything, everything, that was depressing. I was a bag of tears.

I was also back in the hospital for another month.

Poor Jack…

Well, thanks…but here is the reason I am writing this.

As bad as this may be for me…how bad is this for my wife?

My wife Heather, who has struggled with all of this and her job and learning to be the provider and making dinner taking over all the roles I used to do? How hard…and she complained, I won’t lie, but she never stopped. She has not stopped.

She had to rearrange the house, she had to install ramps and redesign our bathroom, while working, dealing with my oldest sons issues, bills and my problems.

And this is the woman, to whom I was separated from for over a year. Who had an affair, not unjustly for the record. Who said she didn’t want to be married to me.

The marriage problems were almost 8 years ago now.

At times I wondered, but not now. It would have been so easy, in fact I offered her many outs, but she only got mad at me when I suggested them.

So here I am, 8 years after one of the lowest points in my life with a wonderful wife, who almost wasn’t my wife, but I never gave up and I gave her chances, the door I left cracked open.
Your despair today, doesn’t have to be there tomorrow…oh do not get me wrong, it was not easy, but worth it?

Oh yeah.

Don’t give up. If they are worth it, don't give up on them, and one day they won't give up on you.

You can do this.