The Secret Life of a Doctor’S Wife

By Rebekah McLeod

After experiencing an unplanned pregnancy over ten years after her third child was born, Rebekah found herself back at the starting line of motherhood. Reflecting on the disparity between expectation and reality, Rebekah tackles the difficulties of parenting, marriage and faith with both humor and insight. The Secret Life of a Doctors Wife is a collection of essays that chronicle the human struggle to find equilibrium (or just a shred of peace) when life throws a giant curve ball.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Sep 16, 2016
• ISBN: 9781512752120

Rebekah McLeod

Rebekah McLeod is a blogger, musician, and songwriter. Rebekah has directed music at churches and conferences nationwide and has toured as an independent singer/songwriter. She and her husband, Ian, have been married for 23 years and have four children. They live in Savannah, Georgia. For more of Rebekah’s writing, visit www.mondaysmuse.com.

Book preview

The Secret

Life

of a

Doctor’s

Wife

REBEKAH MCLEOD

39885.png

Copyright © 2016 Rebekah McLeod.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

Scriptures taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™ All rights reserved.

WestBow Press

A Division of Thomas Nelson & Zondervan

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.westbowpress.com

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-5127-5213-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5127-5214-4 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5127-5212-0 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016912835

WestBow Press rev. date: 9/16/2016

To my mom, who laughs hard and prays harder.

Thank you for encouraging me to share my stories.

CONTENTS

ON PARENTING

Skye’s Story

Unintended

Mothering…Again

Game On

When Back Talk is Best

ON MARRIAGE

Marriage and the Myth

How to Stay Married for Twenty-Three Years

The Secret Life of a Doctor’s Wife

ON FAMILY

Vacation Delusions

Homeschool Dropout

ON FAITH

Four Stages of Broken

Daring to Dream

On the Church Hunt

ON HEALTH

Bread of Life

Locker Room Confessions

Mental Ills

ON FRUSTRATION

Pets We Love to Hate and Fail to Train

Beware of the Mall Masseuse

Blame the Apple

If You Hate Facebook, but You’re Still There

ON GROWTH

Unfamous

Hello, My Name is Rebekah, and I’m an Idea-a-holic

The (Never-Ending) Road to Recovery

PREFACE

I n the spring of 2014, I was wandering around the house on a Saturday morning doing what I do—starting one task, getting distracted by another, and then trying to meander back to whatever I was doing in the first place. My husband, Ian, was also busy doing what he does—watering plants on the front porch, striking through his to-do list one consistent task at a time. I approached Ian with the casual question, Hey, babe, do you think I should start a blog? He thought for a quick moment and replied, Yeah. Yeah, I do. I had been writing since 2012, after the birth of our (unexpected) fourth child, who arrived eleven years after the third. To say that Skye Lynn’s arrival rocked my world would be a gross understatement. I had been working as an independent Gospel artist and worship leader for seven years, and after she was born, the music stopped. I quit everything. There I was, rocking a baby, with hours upon hours—long, middle-of-the-night hours—to think about my life.

Something about change makes old stuff surface. Maybe it was because I missed my audiences, maybe because I needed to process and vent, or maybe it was my feeble attempt to cope with postpartum depression. I don’t know, but I began writing. Writing while the baby slept. Writing when I should have been sleeping but couldn’t.

The material that came out was mostly ramblings about my childhood. I also wrote random musings on the strange reality I found myself grappling with, namely, mothering an infant again after a ten-year hiatus. When I asked Ian’s opinion about starting the blog, my only agenda for having one was to share some of the pieces I liked that I thought might resonate with a few friends and family. Well, that and to become a famous writer like Elizabeth Gilbert.

That hasn’t happened. What has happened is that in sharing weekly blogs on Monday’s Muse, I have experienced great joy, which is truly a reward in itself. For most of my life I have operated in outcome-based creativity, that is, performing/creating for the sake of approval or money (which translates to approval). What I have learned in writing is that it is enough just to create for the sake of creating.

Of course, you now hold in your hand a published book, and that is because I’m a liar. I do care about approval, and that’s OK too. But I also care about my bucket list. I have a list that I wrote in 2009; it is now misshapen and fading, but it stays inside my wallet where the money used to be before I spent it all at Target. Every so often I take it out and read it, just to remind myself of the things I would like to accomplish before I meet my Maker. One of them is to write a book. So, what you hold in your hand is a compilation of some of my favorite posts from Monday’s Muse. But more importantly, you hold a dream of mine that is now a reality.

"…What if you wake up someday, and you’re 65 or 75, and you never got your memoir or your novel written; or you didn’t go swimming in warm pools and oceans all those years because your thighs were jiggly and you had a nice big comfortable tummy; or you were just so strung out on perfectionism and people-pleasing that you forgot to have a big juicy creative life, of imagination and radical silliness and staring off into space like when you were a kid? It’s going to break your heart. Don’t let this happen.¹"

–Anne Lamott

ON PARENTING

SKYE’S STORY

I t was in the spacious confines of the Target family bathroom, alone, where my world was knocked off its axis. It was 2011, a Monday morning in early April, that time of the year in Northern Virginia when winter finally loosens its tight fist; patches of dandelions give way to graceful tulip buds, standing proud and upright, ready to break open to longer days of golden sunshine. I had stopped at Target in the morning to pick up some new earbuds for my daughter’s iPod. I was happy, because spring was coming, my favorite time of year. I was also mildly irritated, because my period was a couple of weeks late.

Our family was gearing up for a trip to Florida for spring break that weekend, and I was in my usual suburban-mom go-mode. My highlighted blonde hair was pulled back in a sloppy ponytail, and not a trace of makeup colored my fair, freckled skin. My outfit consisted of running shorts and a t-shirt, proving my good intentions of working out at some point that day. I walked briskly through Target, high on caffeine and sunshine, found the earbuds, then got distracted in the clothing section and ended up buying a dress. I am prone to do this when I’m happy—that is, walking briskly and buying things. Briskly. This kind of behavior never surprised any of our three kids. They all knew I had little impulse control related to spending money on clothes—or spending money in general. They also knew I would hide the receipts from their Dad. The unwritten rule of our typical Army household was as follows: if you want something, ask Mom.

As I was walking toward the checkout counter I made a split second decision to sweep through the pharmacy section and grab the cheapest pregnancy test I could, all in an effort to trick my body into having a period. I hadn’t taken a pregnancy test in years. We were done having children. Two girls, seventeen and fourteen, and one boy, ten. Andrew was our last child. He was the period on the sentence of our family. When Andrew was two years old, my husband, Ian, had the period written by a perfectly good Army urologist who made us the following promise: "The way I do my vasectomies, they cannot be reversed."

I took the test in the Target family bathroom. I was busy, I had other errands to run and the restroom was right by the exit. Nothing prepared me for that bright horizontal line on the stick. It was undeniably positive. My first reaction was, This test is garbage. I’m going to buy a name-brand one that will prove it. Still, my heart began pounding and my mouth went pasty as I stumbled out of the bathroom and back down the aisle to buy a couple of legitimate, name-brand tests. Surely, I thought, this was a joke.

On my way back to the pharmacy section I recognized Michelle, my neighbor who lived across the street, pushing a cart down the main aisle. I had to make a decision to hide out and wait until she passed or to let her see me in my frantic condition. I