Don't tell my husband I said this... But he is pretty great. If you tell him, I will deny it... Only kidding.
There are moments... Lots of them in fact, if you ask my husband, when I nag him into doing something. Anything really, from changing his clothes into something nicer, to heading to the garden nursery with me or out to lunch on a Sunday afternoon when he'd rather be watching NASCAR... Or loading the dishwasher... Helping with laundry... Okay, okay, you catch my drift - but where am I going with this...
How did I know he was the one? I just did! Don't stop me if you have heard this one before, most of my friends have... It's important for my daughter to read some day and impactful for my son as well. A really good friend introduced us but before that... I heard his voice over the phone when I called for my friend and the rest is history as they say. There was something in his voice that made me feel like I knew him all of my life and also that I had to get to know him. We have been inseparable ever since.
I can still remember dancing by the beams of the headlights of his old pick-up truck - in the middle if the desert.... To old time love songs.... Teenage love...
Our beautifully small wedding... I do... Forever and until death do you part.
Vacations, first apartment, no furniture, new homes, no furniture, the birth of our children...
That is not at all to say that it's always been easy... Or that there haven't been moments we have both wanted to quit. We have both wore our burden of sin in this relationship but we always, always find a way... Sometimes by God's own grace.
There was a night in 2005... A pivitol one for me... I can remember what we were fighting over, it's the same now as it was then... And I'd pushed to far, as I usually do and we were done. Things went flying across the room, tempers were over and above acceptable. If I recall, he left for the night and then came back. The following morning he left for work, we hadn't said much... I will never know if that would have been the end... Divinely placed intervention in the worst sense...
That morning, I was getting ready for work. I remember it like it was yesterday, except that it's been so long now! l received the phone call from my dad that my grandfather had a massive heart attack and was on his way by ambulance to the hospital. He didn't make it.
I was 26 and that was the first big - gut wrenching loss for me. I am still licking the wounds from that one. He is still missed every single day. I believe he would have loved my kids, gotten a true kick out of my son and thought my daughter was just like her mother.
But this story... About my husband... I called him that morning from the hospital with the news and the argument from the night before was suddenly so small, faded into the back-ground and we quietly mended while my heart broke open a hole so wide with the loss of my dear papa.
Another time - really early in our marriage we had been fighting... I don't remember why or what... But I locked myself in our spare bedroom, so angry I wouldn't come out... For so long in-fact I fell asleep...
Boy, my Hubbie thought I was really mad... That I would never come out... He went straight away to the Home Depot and bought me an entire truckbed full of flowers and bushes, garden soil and garden ornaments... Because fresh-cut flowers weren't good enough to say I am sorry... It took me a little while to reveal I napped. :)
Moments when you can look back and say... I am loved, beyond that instance of pain... Of done-ness. The moment that says I am here and I will go above and beyond, even when you don't deserve it because you are worth it.
Circling back to the present for you all... The entire house woke up with 30 minutes to get dressed and out the door... I bribed my kids, yes - sometimes you just have to succumb to bribery.... I told them that if they got completely dressed and out the door in 20 minutes we would stop for donuts - don't judge me :) and they did!
This morning was also a doctor appointment for me... I could write an entire blog about my husband's dislike for all medical procedures, blood-draws, dental cleanings, hospital settings... I can't even watch Grey's Anatomy when he is home.... I think you get the idea...
Anyway, as we are loading the kids in the car he asks where are we stopping for donuts.. I tell him... But I also had a bribe for him too... If you go with us I will stop at Dunkin Donuts, if not, I am just stoping at the CornerMart. I remind him several times that if he goes with us, he'll have to go to the doctor with me... He didn't take to long to consider it.
Be it the donut bribe or something more, I do not know but having him with me... Being able to take his hand when I needed it... Just to feel his presence... My love-cup was full today.
Sitting in the waiting room for my turn... We didn't talk much. I was thinking about the pending procedure. I didn't ask him what he was thinking... Maybe nothing... Maybe this wasn't a big deal to him... Again I don't know...
There was this woman, her husband and her 6 year old daughter sitting next to us. I had to chuckle to myelf... As we're sitting there this woman, in deep conversation with her husband, She is just going on and on... This one long run-on sentence that started with grocery shopping and somehow circled around to her major and all the courses she'd taken last year... Meanwhile their daughter was taking to her daddy about coupons... Her conversation was also this one long run-on sentence... And it struck me, in the quiet of my moment, holding onto my husbands arm, looking over his shoulder at the game he's playing with on his phone, passing the time...
It struck me that a) she must never get to talk with him very much and she was trying to cram a lifetime worth of conversation into this FaceTime she was getting or that 2) she must be as nervous as I am, only vocalizing it and she needed his strength as much as I, in my quiet needed my husbands.
Yes, I can count the bad moments (and not that these doctor visits are bad), some of the bad moments are just as monumental as all the good...
But to know... With little doubt that you are loved, that someone else on this planet has your back... To be able to do life with another person has to be an extraordinary gift.
To my daughter --- pick the one not like the other boys. The one that says let's wait... The one who will meet your mom and dad... The one who has you home before curfew. The one that asks your dad for permission to take care of you... Make sure you never doubt his affection for you... Wait for the one like your dad.
And to my son... Tell her you are sorry! Treat her like something to be prized, something that cannot be bought. Hold her hand, be strong when she needs it. Wait for her... Look her mom and dad in the eye, shake their hand. Have her home by curfew. Ask her dad for permission to take care of her. Say you are sorry and buy her flowers... Never let her doubt for one second who your heart belongs to.
Both of you... Love God First.. The One second and everything else will fall in place.