thoughts about my #1 and This is Us

It’s weird how so much more seems to happen while he’s gone.  I know that’s not really true, but there are so many things I take for granted that I get to share with him every day when he’s home.

Life is so dang full this summer!  We’ve only been home a couple days so far (because of camp and the Grand Canyon and the mountains with Dave’s family), but now we’re home with the little things like dentist appointments for everyone (and cavities for everyone, including me, boo…looks like we need to take our brushing up a notch!), vet appointments, summer jobs and summer goals and summer classes, closet clean-outs and school-work filing away, planting flowers, carpools to art classes, big decisions for big kids (more on that soon) and I love it all.  Mostly because my own “summer goal” is to put technology aside as much as possible and look in my girls’ eyes more than ever.  And that is fulfilling I tell you.

Anyway, I digress, because really I’m talking about Dave here.  And how I miss sharing all this with him when he’s gone.  And how I sometimes I take that guy for granted and need to put away my technology for him even more than for my girls.  I take it for granted that after nearly 22 years of marriage we can look at each other across the room and know what the other is thinking or feeling (most of the time)…the good and the bad.  And that we’re in this thing together.  I love that I get to share everything with him from stuff like how Grace fell skateboarding this week and has been limping around because she hurt her foot so bad (Elle did the exact same thing last month over in Hawaii), to how Claire has come home glowing from early-morning volleyball camp each morning and how Lucy has been using the biggest words to describe things and has been making herself “exponent” worksheets out of the blue, and is pleased as punch with herself about that little fact.  

It’s not just the housekeeping or the parenting, it’s that he has the power to say one little thing that will make any darkness light.   It’s how he can turn my Boggle game around (here) in ways that open up the world to me.  And that he’s good to the core.  And that sometimes, when he’s telling me something really serious, that vein that runs vertically down center of his forehead pops out a little and makes him more handsome than ever.  

Oh it’s not all butterflies and rainbows that’s for sure.  We can fight with the best of them.  We are both so dang strong-willed and opinionated in our own ways.  Marriage takes a lot of work and compromise and forgiveness and repentance.  But that’s what makes it beautiful in a lot of ways.  It’s broken down and then built back up again, and then broken down again and built up even stronger.

While Dave was in China this last time the girls and I carved out some time to finish the first season of This Is Us.  We started watching it on a marathon spree with my parents at Christmas and got through like 12 episodes and it’s been slow-going since we got home (we always want all of us to be there to watch together and that’s tricky with everyone going different directions).

I don’t want to give anything away for anyone who hasn’t watched, but I’ll just say I love how those last couple episodes show compromise and partnership in a marriage.  It’s made me think about my own.  Do I give the benefit of the doubt enough?  How many doors have I slammed lately? 🙂  Have I sincerely complimented him lately?  Have I told him what I love best about him like Jack does for Rebecca?  Do I even take time to notice what I love best about him?

Sometimes I’m a complete failure at that.  I get huffy at the dumbest things.  Sometimes I let the hoopla of life get in the way of showing him how much all he does means to me.  How much just having him at my side means to me.  And I’ve realized when I take time to think about and notice those things, any frustration and huffiness is taken over by so much gratitude: I’m the luckiest girl ever that he’s mine.  And I need to let him know that better.

That’s what I’ve been pondering lately about that guy I get to be married to.