Adapting to Change

There have been quite a few changes going on in the Cain household in the past few months. We’ve had to learn a little bit on how to adapt to change and reassess our plans when things go awry. The age-old, “when life gives you lemons” lesson.  So, this week I thought I’d just take a moment to talk about some of the things that have been going on in our lives and how we’ve dealt with them.

Starting with the big one, a while ago I mentioned my husband Joshua was leaving for boot camp and then didn’t say much more about it. I had intended to do a post about it, once we were a little further into the experience, but then like the title suggests, plans changed. Let me start by saying he’s okay, but just about a month after Joshua left, I received a call that he was in the hospital trying to reach me. Not the best phone call to get in the car on the way to work. When I reached him, he told me that during a routine health check at boot camp he had an extremely elevated heart rate, which prompted their medical team to send him to the hospital for further testing. At the hospital, they diagnosed him with a heart condition and he was told he would need surgery to fix the issue and continue his military training. Long story short, the military ended up not approving the surgery, and since his condition was non-life-threatening, they opted to send him home instead.

This was a huge twist in our plans. We had planned at least the next 4-5 years of our life around Joshua serving in the military and that all went out the window in the course of a few days. We decided to wait to discuss our next steps until Joshua made it home. Which took way longer than I expected. The time waiting for him to get home was really hard for me. I was terrified that something might happen with his health while we were waiting to get him home. He kept telling me on the phone he was fine, but not being there with him and just hearing he had a heart condition, it was hard not to worry. However, when ee got home, I was able to see that the condition was not so serious and we’ve followed up with his doctors at home.

While I was ecstatic to have Joshua home, his coming home opened up a new set of challenges. With Joshua leaving, we had made some room changes around the house fully expecting that I would be moving to wherever he was next, rather than him coming back home. Joshua’s younger brother was moving back in with us for a while, he worked nights and really needed his own room so he could sleep during the day. To make room for my brother-in-law, I decided to move Delilah into my room and give Delilah’s room to him. In order to do this though, I had to give up my queen-sized bed and get a twin bed so everything would fit. I wasn’t ready to give up on getting Delilah to sleep in her own bed, so I set up her crib. It was snug, but it worked and I liked having Delilah in the room with me.

However, with Joshua coming home, we needed a bigger bed again and I had already gotten rid of our other bed. We decided to buy a good quality air mattress until we figured out what we wanted to do. We were able to move things around to make it fit, but there was no way we were fitting a frame in there. It was uncomfortable but we made it work.

I like to think we’re pretty good at adapting to the challenges that life throws at us, but it isn’t without considerable stress. I’d be lying if I tried to say that all of these things haven’t been affecting me emotionally. The stress wasn’t just getting to me, we could also tell how much all these changes were impacting Delilah. She would get really upset whenever I would leave the room and she wasn’t sleeping well either. In the end, we made the decision that she needed me to be the one at home with her. It’s been a few weeks since I stopped working and I feel like we’re just now starting to get a sense of normalcy back to our days. Delilah’s starting to sleep better, which means we’re all sleeping a little better. I feel like there is still a lot up in the air when it comes to our future, but I’m confident that we’ll be able to work together to figure out what’s best for our family.