It must be easy for you

I'm so encouraged and thankful for all of your responses to the launch of this blog! I am not used to using this blogging platform and had no idea there were comments until today, so my apologies for not responding to all of your kind words.  I have ideas, and suggestions, and what has worked for me but certainly but I want everyone who feels like they have something to share that this is the place for it. 

I am a very organized person by nature.  I am most comfortable with a schedule and a routine and things in their place.  It took me a long time to understand that my husband's complete lack of organization wasn't a  just a choice he was making.  And he didn't understand that although it is part of my nature, it still takes work; it's just work I think is worth doing.

He thought for a long time that it was easy for me.  Effortless, even.  So we had one person working very hard and swimming up stream trying to organize everything, and one person who, because of a condition called ADD, dis-organizing everything.  We were forces working in opposition.


You know that friend? The one who weighs 107 pounds and thinks she is fat when she weighs 110? So she wiggles her nose, says, “Fat no more!” and her pants are suddenly so baggy she has to buy a belt? You hate her a little, don’t’ you? It’s so easy for her. You cannot see any effort in what she has done. You definitely don’t feel like being supportive while she goes belt shopping, do you? You feel, as my friends from the south say, like you are “fixin’ to git un-saved”. When she tells you “you can do it too!”, doesn’t it make you angry? She just doesn’t understand how hard it is for everyone else. How hard it is for you.

That’s how your husband feels. It looks easy. Even if you have put effort into it; he can’t see what you did to make it happen. He can’t see the effort, he can’t understand it, he thinks you just wiggle your nose, and poof! It happens.

There is a laziness that is learned from that. If you failed over and over in a world that looks so easy for other people, you learn to give up before you even try. Every ADD book says people with ADD aren’t lazy. I’m here to tell you that ADD can be so discouraging, and their brains are so in need of external stimulation that yes, they can be lazy. But pointing that out to your husband is not helpful. Back up and read that again.

You have to forgive. Think of all the times you probably piss God off in one day. You aren’t forgiven once and for all. You know that, right? You’re saved once and for all, but you have to be forgiven over and over, sometimes for sins one stupider than the next. If you forgave your husband half as much as God forgave you, you’d be in the top 1% of amazing wives.

I am not in the top 1% of amazing wives, by the way.  But I have the desire to be. 

My Family Has ADD

Well, hi there.  Welcome to my family.  We have ADD.  Actually, just my husband has it but like any other chronic illness, or mental disorder, or dysfunction, or behavioral problem, or disability (all of which ADD has been called), the entire family has it.  So the entire family has to deal with it.

I have read book after book after article after blog post about living with ADD.  The advice ranges from "Embrace it! You are lucky to have such a creative husband!" to "Divorce him.  He will never change. He can't".

Both are equally discouraging.  It's impossible to embrace it.  It's freakin' ADD - it's like embracing an amoeba.  And the divorce thing? Of course I have thought of it, but I don't want to.  I love my husband very deeply.  I don't want to divorce him.  He is who he is, and together we can deal with it.  With God's help; which is frustratingly sparse when it comes to this matter. 

So "My Family Has ADD" is born.  It's for wives whose husbands have ADD, and have faith in God.  Because no one else gets it.