Even in the best of times, depression is heavy.
Therefore, when additional bad stuff arises, such as an illness or an injury, the extra weight can make life a lot more difficult.
But even in that, there are often extra graces for the bearing.
I wrote before about the small external graces that help hold up the heavy ceiling. But there are important and specifically-relational graces that really shine during the extra-difficult times. And sometimes, beyond all reasoning, those graces even come straight from the problems.
In a mishap a few weeks ago, Dave sustained three major scrapes - one the full length of his right forearm, a deep one on his left elbow, and a nasty one just below his right knee. For two weeks, he was limping and wincing, slathered up with three tubes of Neosporin and fresh wrappings every morning, was in too much pain to shower without help, and took as many painkillers as the prescription bottle allowed. He was miserable, and there was nothing to do but manage the pain and wait for the skin to knit back together.
As his wife, his injuries threw my whole morning routine for a spin, and for two weeks I had to wake up early and give my mornings to my increasingly-irritable invalid husband.
The first two days were the easiest for me to be the caring, doting wife. I even felt closer to him as I tended him from scalp to sole. My stomach lurched in sympathy whenever he winced at the stray frayed corner of a washcloth, or that hissing sound he made every time I smeared Neosporin onto his torn pink skin. Every maternal caregiver neuron in my body was afire with cooing sympathy.
By the third day, those neurons had burnt out.
By then, all the grateful adrenaline - pumping from "Thank God it wasn't worse" - was gone. He was uncomfortable and moody, and I was inconvenienced and holding on to my patience by a fingernail and few frayed threads.
But there were still scrapes to slather and a husband to clean. For days and days and interminable days. His depression darkened and seethed at a black low boil, and I was losing the will to care.
But the fourth day came. And the fifth. And the sixth. The seventh. And the eighth.
Every day, I woke an hour early to slather the scrape with ointment, cover it with overlapping non-stick pads, wrap it with a fresh roll of gauze, and tape secure. And I did this in triplicate, for each oozing scrape, as he winced and hissed and moaned.
Every. Single. Day.
It's the 10th day, a Wednesday, that I remember.
He had been scraped up on a Sunday afternoon, and the next Monday - 8 days after the mishap - Dave's knee wrapping had slipped while walking at work. When he pulled up his pant leg, the gauze had been stained yellow by the healing ooze, and I had to peel the weave of the gauze out of the half-scabbed goo of skin below his knee.
Lots of wincing and hissing.
So on Tuesday morning, he asked, "Can you wrap it a little tighter, so it doesn't do that?" So, with my foot propped on the edge of the bed and his leg crooked over mine, I unrolled the gauze as tight to his skin as possible, wrapping it snugly above and below and around the joint. By then, my best defense to his gloominess was poorly-placed lame jokes, so I bragged to him about being valedictorian of wrappings.
"Mm," he said, an elbow bent over his eyes as he clenched his teeth.
The following morning, 10 days after the mishap, the 10th morning of showering and kneeling and scrubbing and wincing and babying and biting my tongue and running out of time to do my hair, I reached for the 10th time into the gauze bag for another roll and the blue-handled pair of scissors. I'm dripping wet, running late, smearing ointment on an open wound, and just as I lay on the non-stick pads and start with the gauze, he says, "Can you do it a little looser today? Yesterday was too tight."
"Too tight? But you asked me to wrap it tight."
"I know, but yesterday it was too tight," he insisted, laid back on the bed with one leg in the air.
"Well, how tight do you want it?"
"I don't know, just not that tight."
I felt my incisors clamp down on my tongue as I pulled one loop around his knee.
"Like this?"
"Mm...it can go tighter than that."
I reached behind his leg and pulled a little more.
"This?"
"A little tighter."
I pulled again.
"A little more."
Now I could taste blood.
"This is how tight it was yesterday," I hissed.
Twelve days of not being able to shave my legs because of helping with this and he wanted to blame his discomfort on my wrapping?
I wanted to stick my finger right into the painful pink goo of his kneecap.
"First Monday was too loose, then Tuesday was too tight, even though YOU told me - "
"JUST - just pull it a little tighter - "
I yanked at the bandage, eyes blazing, and squealed, "Is THIS tight enough??"
The bandage cut into the flesh of his calf and he jerked his head up to glare between his knees as I cut off the circulation. I narrowed my eyes right back at and for an instant we just glared at each other through the gap between his legs, my elbows hoisted over my head with a fistful of gauze, exhaling hard out my nose as Dave bit down and clenched his jaw.
If looks could kill.
He was so sick of being unwell and I was so sick of taking care of him and we were both so pissed and -
We burst into giggles.
I don't know why, and I don't know where they came from. They just came. One moment we were murder, and the next moment, my knees gave out.
We looked at each other and burst out laughing; we looked again, and it bubbled up fresh all over. I fell against the bed and his knee went lax. His chest shook, we could barely breathe, the gauze fell out of my limp hands, and we giggled and giggled and giggled at the whole ridiculous mess.
I couldn't stop laughing.
And whatever it was, it helped.
In the end, I wrapped his knee just the way he wanted, without complaint. I kissed him on the cheek when he sat up, and, before I went back to the bathroom to dry my hair, I patted him on a bare thigh. I kept smiling at myself in the mirror, fighting the subsided giggles. He limped in to brush his teeth, and leaned over to give me a quick peck on the lips.
My legs were still hairy, I was still running late, he was still uncomfortable and in pain - all that problem-causing stuff was still there. But somehow, we were OK now. We were better.
Somehow, in the midst of it, and from the very situation that had circumstantially worsened his depression, we found we had been given another grace.
(And the last four mornings, the last of his two invalid weeks, were much better after that 10th day.)
Therefore, when additional bad stuff arises, such as an illness or an injury, the extra weight can make life a lot more difficult.
But even in that, there are often extra graces for the bearing.
I wrote before about the small external graces that help hold up the heavy ceiling. But there are important and specifically-relational graces that really shine during the extra-difficult times. And sometimes, beyond all reasoning, those graces even come straight from the problems.
In a mishap a few weeks ago, Dave sustained three major scrapes - one the full length of his right forearm, a deep one on his left elbow, and a nasty one just below his right knee. For two weeks, he was limping and wincing, slathered up with three tubes of Neosporin and fresh wrappings every morning, was in too much pain to shower without help, and took as many painkillers as the prescription bottle allowed. He was miserable, and there was nothing to do but manage the pain and wait for the skin to knit back together.
As his wife, his injuries threw my whole morning routine for a spin, and for two weeks I had to wake up early and give my mornings to my increasingly-irritable invalid husband.
The first two days were the easiest for me to be the caring, doting wife. I even felt closer to him as I tended him from scalp to sole. My stomach lurched in sympathy whenever he winced at the stray frayed corner of a washcloth, or that hissing sound he made every time I smeared Neosporin onto his torn pink skin. Every maternal caregiver neuron in my body was afire with cooing sympathy.
By the third day, those neurons had burnt out.
By then, all the grateful adrenaline - pumping from "Thank God it wasn't worse" - was gone. He was uncomfortable and moody, and I was inconvenienced and holding on to my patience by a fingernail and few frayed threads.
But there were still scrapes to slather and a husband to clean. For days and days and interminable days. His depression darkened and seethed at a black low boil, and I was losing the will to care.
But the fourth day came. And the fifth. And the sixth. The seventh. And the eighth.
Every day, I woke an hour early to slather the scrape with ointment, cover it with overlapping non-stick pads, wrap it with a fresh roll of gauze, and tape secure. And I did this in triplicate, for each oozing scrape, as he winced and hissed and moaned.
Every. Single. Day.
It's the 10th day, a Wednesday, that I remember.
He had been scraped up on a Sunday afternoon, and the next Monday - 8 days after the mishap - Dave's knee wrapping had slipped while walking at work. When he pulled up his pant leg, the gauze had been stained yellow by the healing ooze, and I had to peel the weave of the gauze out of the half-scabbed goo of skin below his knee.
Lots of wincing and hissing.
So on Tuesday morning, he asked, "Can you wrap it a little tighter, so it doesn't do that?" So, with my foot propped on the edge of the bed and his leg crooked over mine, I unrolled the gauze as tight to his skin as possible, wrapping it snugly above and below and around the joint. By then, my best defense to his gloominess was poorly-placed lame jokes, so I bragged to him about being valedictorian of wrappings.
"Mm," he said, an elbow bent over his eyes as he clenched his teeth.
The following morning, 10 days after the mishap, the 10th morning of showering and kneeling and scrubbing and wincing and babying and biting my tongue and running out of time to do my hair, I reached for the 10th time into the gauze bag for another roll and the blue-handled pair of scissors. I'm dripping wet, running late, smearing ointment on an open wound, and just as I lay on the non-stick pads and start with the gauze, he says, "Can you do it a little looser today? Yesterday was too tight."
"Too tight? But you asked me to wrap it tight."
"I know, but yesterday it was too tight," he insisted, laid back on the bed with one leg in the air.
"Well, how tight do you want it?"
"I don't know, just not that tight."
I felt my incisors clamp down on my tongue as I pulled one loop around his knee.
"Like this?"
"Mm...it can go tighter than that."
I reached behind his leg and pulled a little more.
"This?"
"A little tighter."
I pulled again.
"A little more."
Now I could taste blood.
"This is how tight it was yesterday," I hissed.
Twelve days of not being able to shave my legs because of helping with this and he wanted to blame his discomfort on my wrapping?
I wanted to stick my finger right into the painful pink goo of his kneecap.
"First Monday was too loose, then Tuesday was too tight, even though YOU told me - "
"JUST - just pull it a little tighter - "
I yanked at the bandage, eyes blazing, and squealed, "Is THIS tight enough??"
The bandage cut into the flesh of his calf and he jerked his head up to glare between his knees as I cut off the circulation. I narrowed my eyes right back at and for an instant we just glared at each other through the gap between his legs, my elbows hoisted over my head with a fistful of gauze, exhaling hard out my nose as Dave bit down and clenched his jaw.
If looks could kill.
He was so sick of being unwell and I was so sick of taking care of him and we were both so pissed and -
We burst into giggles.
I don't know why, and I don't know where they came from. They just came. One moment we were murder, and the next moment, my knees gave out.
We looked at each other and burst out laughing; we looked again, and it bubbled up fresh all over. I fell against the bed and his knee went lax. His chest shook, we could barely breathe, the gauze fell out of my limp hands, and we giggled and giggled and giggled at the whole ridiculous mess.
I couldn't stop laughing.
And whatever it was, it helped.
In the end, I wrapped his knee just the way he wanted, without complaint. I kissed him on the cheek when he sat up, and, before I went back to the bathroom to dry my hair, I patted him on a bare thigh. I kept smiling at myself in the mirror, fighting the subsided giggles. He limped in to brush his teeth, and leaned over to give me a quick peck on the lips.
My legs were still hairy, I was still running late, he was still uncomfortable and in pain - all that problem-causing stuff was still there. But somehow, we were OK now. We were better.
Somehow, in the midst of it, and from the very situation that had circumstantially worsened his depression, we found we had been given another grace.
(And the last four mornings, the last of his two invalid weeks, were much better after that 10th day.)
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