10 Years Part 1

In the first year that I was married, so much happened so fast. After the wedding, I remember how Joe would tell me how unimportant my job was compared to his. I know that's not really a good way to start a story, but it's kind of important to know that right from the beginning he made me feel small. I found out I was pregnant in the first two months of our marriage and I think we both felt really happy and excited. Joe was still pretending at this time to be a Christian. We went to church and even to Bible study together. This too will be significant later on in the story. Joe quit his job while I was pregnant and we were without insurance for a short portion of my first pregnancy. Luckily, he got another job at a dump running heavy equipment shortly there after. We decided to buy a house and started looking. We could only afford a house in the high desert and it would be about a 45 minute commute both ways for Joe each day to work. I remember when we found the house that we both loved, but thinking it was a little more than we had originally talked about. We stood in the house, held hands and prayed. We asked God to give us discernment on the decision to buy. We both felt peace about it and decided to purchase. Joe and I didn't have any savings to furnish this house, but I did have a trust fund from my Grandfather, originally intended for my education, and we used that to buy new furniture. I didn't really like what we picked, but Joe convinced me, and after we had purchased everything we needed, Joe used the rest to buy a sand rail even though we couldn't afford tires or a trailer for it, and we had an infant on the way.
While I was pregnant, Joe told me that he didn't do babies. He was great with older kids, but he didn't do babies, and since we had decided that I would quit my "meaningless" job and be a stay at home mom, he really only needed to work, and I would deal with the baby. Zach was such a blessing! He was just the cutest little thing and pretty good for the most part. But I was a new mommy, all alone in a big house all day, and it was an adjustment for me. It was hard. I was tired. I needed a little help sometimes. I remember one night when Joe got home from work, I was so tired and I asked Joe to feed the baby so I could do the dishes and go to bed. I started to cry purely out of exhaustion. Joe continued up the stairs and when he got to the top, he started yelling at me to stop crying. He had warned me that he didn't do babies, and he worked and it was my job to feed the baby. I sat at the bottom of the stairs, holding Zach and crying. I didn't ask him to do anything for a long time after that. I just sucked it up and kept going. Mean while, the sand rail sat tin the garage, never used, not even once. Joe and I visited a few churches in Lancaster, but Joe didn't feel comfortable with any of them, so we stopped going to Church.
Not everything was bad all the time that year. We had some laughs. We took Zach on walks together in the stroller. Joe bought me my china for my birthday and he let me have my family for Thanksgiving. Zachary was such a joy to me, we had our house. It would all get better right?
Joe quit his job at the dump less than a year into it. We couldn't afford our mortgage anymore. We moved Joes brother James in to help us out, but it only created more to fight about and almost exactly one year from the day we purchased our house, we put it up for sale. We had to move in with my Mom and Dad till we could figure something else out.