what can i do for you?

Feb 9, 2015

Sometimes I am a prickly porcupine to live with, sometimes I am more like a fire-breathing dragon. Often I am cheerful and fun and loud and spontaneous and caring and all sorts of other good things, but far more than I like to admit the grumpy monster comes out of me.

One of the things that brings out the prickles is pain, which has been in abundance for the last three years, but has seemed to be all-encompassing since the car accident last week. It feels like I cannot deal with another ounce of hurt added. Last night after 6 hours of church meetings, my face and neck and ribs were DONE.

Another thing is our tinsy little budget that changes all the time based parent’s forgetting their child’s therapy appointment or their vacations or having a sick child. We never know from month to month what our income will be and since our income is small to begin with there is not a lot of room for Richard to lose money when people don’t show up for appointments.

Put those two situations together and you get a giant, prickly, fire-breathing BEAST, which is what I was last night as I tried to make a budget for the month and the year and my physical therapy and Blythe’s appointments with doctors and dentists before her upcoming $400 a month mission. All of which seems like an impossibility.

And instead of continuing to pour over numbers and use my creative little brain to problem solve or think about how to bring in more money or how to cut costs or how to have more faith or how to simply give it all over to God who is endlessly showing me He is taking care of us, I opened my mouth and spewed out toxic sludge on the person I love most.

“Why was your check $600 short?” and “How on earth am I supposed to make this work?” and “Isn’t there something YOU can do to get more hours?” and on and on and on.

And he said, “I’m sorry. I’ll keep looking for a different job.” Then he went and cleaned off our bed (which was piled with my stuff) and came out and asked if there was anything he could do for me.

In my frustration at how much pain my face was in and my anger at our budget for the month, I almost spouted off that there was nothing he could do for me except earn more money, but I took a breath and let his kindness fill my heart. Then I looked in his eyes and let it all melt away.

This is why we are still married. Because he serves and loves and forgives. He shows me on a daily basis what love does. What it looks like. What it feels like. Ever so slowly I am learning to love and serve as he does. To put his needs before my own. To sincerely and actively seek to improve his life.

An article by Richard Paul Evans is circulating around the interwebs about marriage. It is excellent advice and I know first-hand how effective it is because my Richard lives that style of love every single day.

The pain may be an on-going part of my life, most likely, the budgetary challenges will be, but those things are not what really matter. Our marriage is what matters. Our treatment of one another and the love we bless each other with is what matters. The people we become as we serve one another is what matters. The covenants we keep are what matters.