Spending Time Well

So Cathy and I had a fight last night. Hm... a "fight" implies two sides to the issue, but in this case there is only one person at fault, so it wasn't really a "fight". Anyway, I'm recording this mostly because I have a bad memory, and this is my diary-of-sorts, so here goes.

Cathy works hard. She works hard at the office, and she works hard at home. This is made more difficult by her present illness. The difficulty is compounded by my involvement in school. I don't cook fast enough or well enough to relieve her of that task, and I can do laundry only if it is sorted. So, that leaves Cathy working hard, and all I can do is help.

I don't tend to help much when I'm under pressure at school. Now that I am out of school for the summer, I went into "neutral"... but Cathy needed my help, and I wasn't thinking of her.

It is odd; Cathy thinks I am a good husband, and she knows that I love her. I believe her when she says these things. However, she also thinks I am being selfish with my time now that I am out of school. Basically, when I have unplanned time, I do what I feel like doing; sometimes it is work, sometimes I goof off. Cathy does not feel that she has the luxury of goofing off because things need to be done. And she wants me to spend my unplanned time with her rather than goofing off.

That makes sense, right? I think so. I just didn't realize that she wasn't getting my unplanned time.

So the catalyst to the fight was this: Cathy suggested we watch some "24", so we had dinner and watched an episode or two. About 10 PM we called it a night. I had promised to clean up the kitchen that night. When we got done with 24, I went to check my email and stuff, and Cathy asked me to do the dishes. I told her I would before I went to bed, she asked me to do them now, I said I didn't want to, she got upset, I got upset, we had a fight.

After we worked past the emotions, I just sat and listened to Cathy for a while as she vented her frustrations. When she was done, I realized why she was upset.

Phyllis Diller once said,

"Never go to bed mad. Stay up and fight."

Well, she's funny, but she's funny because she's right. We stayed up and worked it out. And the sad truth is that I haven't been thinking of Cathy like I should, especially now that I actually have some unplanned time on my hands.

Well, I've asked God for help, and I think this is part of His way of progressively making me conform to the image of His Son. I figured I would blog this so that I would remember, so that it would humble me, and so that you could think about it, too.