Well, he did it again. New place, same story. It’s not that I thought a new neighborhood would change his behavior, but I didn’t expect him to fall so easily into prior patterns. Yet he had, and as we spoke on the phone via text I became angry. He tried to send me a cute picture of our eldest daughter, and how they’d decided to skip school and take advantage of the nice weather outside. Did he think I wouldn’t find out the real reason?!
I am a travel nurse. My husband used to own his own business, but when it began to not work out we changed things up for our family. They all started traveling with me, and while I worked my husband held the reigns at home. He homeschooled our daughters and did everything to keep our traveling home running smoothly.
But it is his “extracurricular” activities that I’m speaking on now. It’s the other stuff he does when I’m at work. And after this particular day, I realized he was doing it again. He even had a lunch planned the next day.
After I got home from a long shift he nonchalantly mentioned his lunch plans for the following afternoon. I had made a point to not stay angry when he had texted me earlier in the day about them skipping school. I mean, I knew they’d make it up, and I couldn’t allow myself to get angry over something so trivial. But then later that night, at home, as he explained the real reason for missing homeschool lessons, it all made sense. My husband was up to his old tricks, so to speak, and this incident was just another example of that.
“She needed me,” he explained.
“The guy next door, that’s her age, he’s had [a] quadruple bypass for goodness sake,” he added.
I knew. This was what my husband did. He couldn’t help himself. It’s like something within him drove him to do it. I couldn’t think of a single time where he had ignored the need. At our last temporary home in South Carolina, he had done the same thing. It was hard for him to leave that area when I found a new job because of the relationships he had made all over the neighborhood. And sure enough, in our new community, he was at it again.
“I had to,” he said.
“I know,” I agreed.
Then I smiled.
After all, he was a helper. He was a servant. He was a lover of people. His mission was relationships with those around him, and everywhere we landed he took up the task of helping others.