photo by: laura ruth
I’ve been married 10 years today. It’s quite a short time when you think about it. I am living with God’s man for me. But, we’re so far from perfect it’s not even funny. Just this past week we fought … over a sandwich. In reality we fought over what the sandwich represented.
It went something like this:
Wife: Finding her husband has left the sandwich from a previous meal out AGAIN so it has to be thrown out she fires, “Be responsible and put your food away!” (that’s the tame version).
Husband: Feeling attacked (and rightly so) comes out with the barrage of things he’s responsible for and that weigh on him putting wife in her place.
Wife: Listens, annoyed.
Husband: “And somehow it’s all my fault!?”
Wife: Knowingly understanding the above, but thinking, “YES! IT’S YOUR FAULT!” Holds her tongue.
Husband: Weary, Obviously weighed down, not caring that a sandwich might be a casualty of our relationship.
Wife: I want you to understand that I work hard on this food. It takes time … continues her rant on the problems associated with the wasting of food and how we need to solve this problem.
We vented for probably 20 minutes about life over a sandwich. The sandwich didn’t know what hit it. It ended its day at the bottom of dark stink. We dug out. We dug in and did the work of listening and talking and trying to understand where the other person was. We’re always so much deeper than the surface would lead us to believe.
We left that conversation friends, but not lovers. The next day God did that work in me. He convicted my heart. I had not been thankful for everything. I was not being thankful for the sandwich I had to put in the trash. And, when I began to see from a different perspective I saw God shift my love for Grant.
I realized we have food. We have a table to put the food on. We have each other. It was more important for me to be thankful for everything than to be frugal or to be wise with how I use my food. It was more important for me to love.
That night we laughed as friends and lovers do. I saw the man I married loving me. I saw a man who will fight for me, who will sacrifice a sandwich to make time for me.