There's The Idiot I Married!

High School dance, "hoedown" themed. 2002

I still can't explain why. It could be that, for me, adventure only exists in my head. Or the difference between bold and blunt are two different things and I tend to fall to the latter. Thrill is not my friend, meanwhile watching others cross physical limits fascinates me. Adventure usually comes with lightheartedness and I lack both.

I was a curious nerve-racked freshman in high school, on the first day in band class standing next to the instrument room doors, taking in everything. I quietly observed everyone around me, as I do best. Those doors swung open and bursting through was this boy. This boy ran across the room, jumping on tables, swinging his trombone in hand, whooping it up with his buddy close by doing the same thing.

"Who is that?" I asked the girl next to me.

She answered with this beaming smile, "That's Josh Wing."

My cheeks got hot, I'm sure I turned red. I was hooked. He was almost everything I wasn't. Sure he was cute, but I could sense his free spirit, every time as soon as he came into sight.

It took a while for him to notice "quiet Kailan" in the corner, but eventually he did.

It's sure been an adventure ever since we hooked up, got married, had 6 children, going on 11 years and counting. A couple of years ago, we hit a brick wall we didn't know how to deal with. We had issues within a church and felt very rejected. I faltered to a faithful depression state, but even my "adventurer" husband followed suit. It felt like we were both dying. Dying away from the world and it's issues, dying away from parenthood, dying away from each other. We sought help from friends and other pastors. I can't even begin to express my thanks to those people. After coming up out of the state of depression (we are still working on it) it's left us timid for making those next steps, getting back into life. But mostly, fighting to find ourselves again. We are different because of the events in our lives, (which is good for growth) but there's still that underlying truth to our personalities. I'm a dark horse, and he's the adventurer. But I wasn't seeing that in him..... until now.

It was Easter weekend (4 days ago to be exact) and he got an itch to do something... well... stupid.. er I mean, crazy! He wanted to show his kids some parkouring. People that can parkour are amazing people. If you don't know what it is, you should look it up on youtube. It's always been a dream of Josh's to do it like they do, and he had some mild skills... from high school... (ehem, he's 31 now, a 7 year old back injury, but those are just minor details, right?) He aims for this railing at my mom's house. As soon as his feet hit the railing from his high jump, the railing bent away, sealing his fate of falling to the ground. I saw the hit and ran to him. The seriousness on his face was all I had to see to know this was bad. The doctor confirmed it a couple hours later. He broke his wrist.


Of course, my family and I had our laugh about it. I smacked my head several times, wondering, "what in the world was he thinking?!" Although it's left me completely exhausted, having to do all the house work, most of the driving, taking care of our 5 little minions, all by myself.... including bedtime?!?! But on the other hand, something about it resonated with me. Something about it comforted me. I started to recognize a friend I had missed. My idiot adventurer. The stuff that makes him this lighthearted person, was finally surfacing again, and he's got a cast to prove it.

He apologized to me for being stupid and getting hurt, and I just replied, "I married you because of crap like this." We both laughed about it and I'm just glad to have this piece of him back.