Not to be trite, but I see you. I see you even though you don’t want to be seen. All the good things you do that nobody ever hears about.  The jackets bought, the lunch dates scheduled, the babies rocked.  I don’t see them because you talk about them or post about them or, heaven forbid, brag about them.  I see them because, sometimes, they just catch up with you on a day that I am there.

Someone stops by the table where we are eating messy hamburgers with toasted buns– working diligently to keep the juices under control.  The person will stop and speak to you and you will put your hand up to cover your mouth full of food and smile warmly at them.  Ask them how they are doing.  Found a job yet?  How’s the baby?  Did y’all make it back from your trip ok?  Then, just before the person walks away they will say quietly, “Thank you.  We wouldn’t have made it without you.” You will duck your head quickly and put your hand out to touch their arm.  Smile and send them on their way.  We will continue fighting the battle of our hamburgers and one or the other of us will take a long pull of our Dr.Pepper.  Anything to keep from having a conversation about what just happened.  But, I will grin– happy to have you as my friend and happy to be eating lunch with you even though I have lost the battle with the juices and they are running down my arm.

Sometimes, I won’t be there on that day, but I will hear about it another way.  My phone will ring.  A mutual acquaintance calling and I will answer wondering what’s up.  An excited voice will ring back, “You won’t believe what she did for us! It was just so nice and it made our whole day.” I will answer with a laugh in my voice. “She’s a keeper that’s for sure.” Then I will hang up the phone and sit down to say a quick prayer for you and to wonder.

Wonder how many kind things you have done on the sly.  How many needs you have met without any expectation of thanks or recognition.  How many groups you’ve led or rides you’ve given or hospital visits you’ve made.  It’s one of the things I’m looking forward to in heaven. That day when we all settle in with popcorn and watch the movie of your kindness.  I really can’t wait.  What a joy that will be!  I’ll clap and cheer and probably get popcorn everywhere.

I will do this because you are a guidepost.  I don’t know if you know that, but you are.  When I feel the urge to do something nice, I always think of you.  How would you handle it?  What would you do for this person in need or hurting?  How would you show Christ to them?  Some answer always come back. Sometimes, I am smart enough to follow through and sometimes I am not. (I don’t think it’s a secret that you are nicer than me!)

But, always, your example is there.  Floating in front of me.  Do nice things and keep your mouth closed about it.  Do them because they reflect your heart.  Because love is always a good choice.  Because you are on the path to becoming more like Christ and loving people quietly is a good way to make some progress on that journey.

I have been a part of so many Bible studies.  Mark this.  Color that yellow. Memorize this.  And, I have learned from all of them.  But, I have learned the most about what it means to be a Christian by watching friends like you.  Friends that love people.  Naturally and honestly and with their cars and kitchens and spare change.

So, I have this little hope.  I hope that someday one of my own good things catches up with me while we are eating lunch somewhere.  Maybe, a salad for a switch, and I will have lettuce stuck in my teeth as someone stops by to tell me thank you.  I will reach out and touch their arm and when they leave you will be grinning at me and taking a long draw of your Dr. Pepper.  My face will flush because I won’t know how to handle it gracefully, but you won’t say a word and neither will I.  Because, you have taught me that to talk about the good things we do is to cheapen them. Instead, let them swirl and journey until they find their way back to a lunch table with a blue checked tablecloth and mismatched salt and pepper shakers.  Then, they will land safely and do the job they’re meant to do.  To encourage someone further back on the path to keep trying.  To follow. To understand that there are good people doing good things for absolutely no glory. No glory except to follow our Christ and to share His love with the world.

That’s why I want that day to happen.  I want you to know that you have made a difference in my life. That you have been a teacher in addition to being a friend. The way you live out your faith has changed mine and I will be forever grateful for that. I am so, so proud to call you a friend, but don’t worry I won’t name you.  However, I might pick up the lunch tab next time.  Chinese sound good?

My little grandson is sick.  My little grandson is sick and I had to leave him and come home.  Things are tough in my world.

To leave him on a good day is hard, but to leave him on a day when his little voice is raspy and his little body is hurting is almost more than this grandma heart can handle.  It’s strep and he will get over it.  Lots of little kids do.  But, those little kids don’t have my daughter’s eyes and her goofy smile.  They don’t have my husband’s birthmark or my mother’s temper.  This little man is so many parts the people I adore that I really have a hard time being rational when it comes to anything concerning him.

Really.  A very hard time.

So, on the morning I had to leave him, I got up the second I heard him cry. I met his mama in the hallway and waved her back to her temporary bed on the couch and I went into his room. Then, I tried everything I knew to make him happy.  No matter that it was 4 a.m.  No matter that there was no coffee in the house.  No matter that the only thing that quieted him was a Barney video.  I thought I had served my time in the world of people who have to watch Barney and was finally free twenty years ago. Alas, that was just life playing a cruel joke on me and I am once again drowning in I love you, you love me…like I mentioned…things are tough.

But, I persevered.  It’s my little grandson.  I would do anything for him.  Even tolerate Barney.  Thankfully, after thirty minutes of school yard songs and children dressed in sweaters looped over their necks and pink socks, my little guy started to calm down and get sleepy.  I was thrilled.  This meant rest for him and it meant I could leave knowing he was peaceful.

So, I sat in his rocker.  I arranged his favorite white blanket under his cheek the way he likes it.  I adjusted his chubby legs so they didn’t dangle and I pulled his blue, bull-dog pjs down over his little tummy.  I was creating the perfect scenario where he would feel how much I love him and go to sleep and have illness-smashing rest.  This was going to happen.

As the final touch, I asked Echo to play Amazing Grace by Alan Jackson.  Usually, I sing it to him as I rock him, but that morning I had too many tears clogging up my voice so I asked Mr. Jackson to fill in.

Now, I am going to tell you this next part only to prove my earlier claim that I struggle to be rational when it comes to this little grandson.  I sat there looking into his blue eyes, feeling my own eyes filling with tears again (I did mention I was minutes away from leaving him!) and feeling the weight of the goodbye hanging between us.  Knowing that it was going to be weeks or even months before I saw this little person again.  Knowing that he would change drastically in that time and knowing that he holds a lot of what makes me really happy within his sweet little self.  It was a very large moment full of love and emotion and sorrow.  And, in the middle of all of that, Echo answered me with absolutely no deference to what was happening.  She was as cheerful as if I had just arrived for the visit.  As if I had weeks to spend with him.  It made me angry.  I’m not kidding.  I felt a flash of irritation for the dumb little disk on his dresser that follows our commands and plays him music.

“You are a stupid machine.” I said, with what I’m sure was an inappropriate amount of derision, and then I glared at her. At it. At whatever it is.

All of this really happened.  I am not attempting to be humorous.  In fact, I am still angry.  I thought about it the whole nine hours home in my truck and, every time I did, I felt another little flash of irritation. It truly upsets me that so much of our life and relationships are shared by a tangle of wires and numbers and computer thingys that will never understand the emotion held in a single life moment.  That when you are holding your sick little grandson and rocking him to sleep and waiting for his eyes to flutter shut– it is one of the best and worst moments that has ever unfolded.  Best because he’s there in your arms.  The weight of him.  The way his breath slows as he fights sleep.  The worst because you know as soon as he loses the battle and goes to sleep you will have to lay him carefully in his crib, turn on his ceiling fan and closet light and get in a car and leave him.  Leave him. Your sick grandson.  Drive away.   Take yourself somewhere he isn’t.

A moment like that deserves proper pathos and not a stupid cheerful computer voice.  All of these machines just don’t get it and yet we welcome them into our humanity.  Our most treasured moments.  And then, they don’t even behave properly.

Sigh.  I should have just sang Amazing Grace myself.  No slight to Mr. Jackson– who does it so well.  Maybe, if I had, my little guy would already be feeling better.  And, I wouldn’t be sitting here typing this for all of you and glaring at my own Echo who wasn’t even there that morning and is as innocent as a computer thingy can be.

And you thought I was kidding when I said I can’t be rational when it comes to this grandson of mine.

As I’m sure I mentioned, things are tough.

Algae slimed fish bowl,

drawers empty of clothes,

you with your nose running and

a hot hole in your seven-year-old soul.

I tried.

Me, with my twenty-five-year old mind

and not an apron to my name.

I vacuumed dead flies from the windowsills and

scheduled skating rinks for birthdays.

We edged around each other like

gentle boxers afraid to punch,

but still needing the purse.

It all hurt, but I tried.

Late nights listening for gravel crunching,

measuring your face’s twitching for trouble.

Loving, but without a real claim or permission.

Victory comes in the form of your

lanky body lazing on my couch.

Your voice speaking everyday things to my ear.

We are still a we.

Look what we made;

we made family.

I had that thought the other day–that my grief was a three year old.  I smiled.  I couldn’t help it.  The comparison was too humorous.  Too true.

My grief really is a three year old in every way that it can be.  It is headstrong and determined to have its’ own way.  It, no matter how much I beg or threaten, refuses to just sit quietly and not disturb anyone.  It picks the worst times to make a scene and, most importantly, it is something I never quite understand.  I try to make friends with it and get us both to a place where we can operate in cooperation, but just when I think we are making headway it surprises me by doing the opposite of what I expect. Then, in that moment, when I am exhausted by trying to control and manage it I have to just give in and let it do what it does.

Tears?

Anger?

Screaming with pure abandon at the unfairness of the world?

It does it all.

My only choice is to just be there with it and wait for it to pass.  I am not in control of any of it.  I am just the lady who exists for it to come back to when it is spent and ready to quiet down.

As I thought about my three year old grief, I realized my grief that is 14 years old this summer is sometimes a little easier to manage.  It doesn’t want much from me.  Just to be left alone.  As long as I peek in on it every once awhile, it is perfectly happy to live in that little corner of my brain I have allowed it to occupy.  But, if I want to poke it or stir it into doing something I think it should then it can be worse than the three year old on its’ worst day.  This grief has years behind it.  It knows all that has passed between us.  All that has been missed.  It fully understands that life has not been the same since we met and never will be again. It is too smart for my tricks and bribes.  If this fourteen year old grief gets stirred up, it is hurtful and vengeful.  It hurls promises I missed and days I wasted at me.  It goes for my heart.  Every time.

So, like everyone else trying to live a life with grief, I manage the best I can.  I manage my new grief with its’ unpredictability and immature needs and I manage my fourteen year old grief with it’s cynicism and it’s knowing.  And, I hope they both will learn from my older grief.  This grief has been around for decades.  This quiet, silent grief acknowledges that these youngsters will follow it into time and that someday, because life happens this way, the youngsters will have more competition.  They will have to make way for new grief.  New heart break.  They will be asked to step into the shadows and to become yet another part of what has fashioned me into who I am.

A person who tries to soak up every minute.  Every laugh.  Every memory.  A girl who feels frantic in her enjoyment of loved ones, because I know they can disappear.  In a car wreck. Because of a disease. On a Tuesday.  And, once they are gone, they don’t reappear.  Or at least not as we knew them.  Instead, they reappear as a new grief.  A grief that is mixed up with warm memories of what it means to love someone and take them for granted.

What a luxury that is.  To take people for granted.

I don’t do that anymore.  I can’t.

If I try, one of the griefs I give residence to will remind me otherwise.   They will make me cry when I hear a certain song, or pass a certain color of truck or even wake up to a sunshine day that feels a little empty.  They keep me on my toes.  They are unruly children assigned to me.  I must learn how to live with them and control them and, hopefully, turn them into something precious and fine that will add to my life and not destroy it.

Good luck to me.

I’m not sure I’m up to this job.  Sometimes, oftentimes, I wish I was childless. And naive. And took everything for granted.  Maybe, even living life selfishly, thinking change would never come to my door.  Grief would never need to live in my heart.

If you are one of these people, you have everything the rest of us want.  Enjoy it while it lasts.  Because, grief is not a very fun housemate.  Especially, when it is sprawled in the middle of the floor kicking its’ feet screaming and begging for five more minutes, or one more trip to a favorite place, or even just for the briefest whisper of how things used to be.

Good luck on that day.

I would tell you what to do in that instance, but I’m still figuring it out.

My best advice is to hope your grief has the good manners not to have a melt down in public.  That’s when things really get interesting.

You know–in your favorite store, when the nice cashier is looking at you sympathetically and the guy behind you is jingling the keys in his pocket and studying the ceiling tiles. Both of them praying for you to gain control so they don’t have to be involved in your messy.  Your lack of control.  Your humanity.

Honestly, you will probably feel sorrier for them than you will yourself.  You’ll understand that it’s hard to watch and that it makes them uncomfortable.

So, you’ll do whatever you need to do to escape the situation as gracefully as possible. Put on your sunglasses.  Buy a piece of chocolate or some other brightly colored something. Crack a dumb joke.  Anything that will distract your grief until you are out of that big, brightly lit square of knowing.

And, when you are back in the hot car with your tears falling freely you will have a stern talk with your grief.  Make sure it knows that it should never act up in public. Remind it that it’s three years old now.  It can’t continue to act this way.  You expect more of it.

Then, in exasperation, you will drive home and binge watch your favorite show on Netflix.  Maybe even eat all the chocolate you bought at the store and follow that with a glass of wine.

Who cares?

You’re the boss of this whole mess.

Sorta.

The place where I buy my coffee is closing.  It happens.  The online lure claims another victim.  Why keep a storefront open when you can sell everything from a tall, metal shelf?

Why indeed.

Maybe because I went to that store with my Mom.  We pulled up out front, our tires crunching in the gravel, and walked through that glass door.  My mom pushing the door every time–even though a big sign said pull.  I would laugh and then help her while she carried on about how she would have gotten it if I had just waited.

Then, we would go through the store with her having to touch every box and smell every coffee pod. Picking coffee was serious work.

When we were finally done, and had the perfect coffees in our little red basket, she would always have to make herself a complimentary cup of coffee.  This took even more time, because my Mom was mechanically challenged.  I’m not sure that’s really a thing, but if it is, I have it too.  We can’t work things.  Especially mechanical things.  Things that have buttons and levers and other buttons you’re absolutely not supposed to push.

We pushed them every single time.

It was always an accident and there was always hot water going somewhere it wasn’t supposed to.  Then, there was a wad of paper towels and both of us laughing.  It was a struggle and every time when we got back in my car she spilled the cup of cream colored liquid everywhere. But, it was all worth it.

It was worth it because it made her happy.  Made her smile. Made me smile.

Now that she’s gone, every time I walk through the door of that coffee place I am somewhere that she used to be. Those walls used to hold her sass, her humor and her soft hands that I loved.  Sometimes, I let myself pretend I will find her in the next aisle over trying to decide between hazelnut and Irish cream coffee. I know it’s not true, but it’s joyful for the moment that I let myself believe it.

It’s a little bridge back to when we lived on the same planet.

I love those bridges.  I guard them jealously.

It’s why I still have a certain ugly plaid chair that might stay with me forever.  It’s why, when my husband mentions selling our house, I balk.  If I sell this house, I will never live in a house, again, that my parents have visited.  I like houses that my parents have gathered round the table in. Or made Thanksgiving dinner.  Or looked at a craft magazine. I’m not ready to lay tinder at the foot of those bridges and burn them myself.

In fact, if I could, I would buy the coffee place and keep it open for other mother and daughter duos.  I would stand behind the shiny counter and watch them push on the pull door.  I would watch them wander through the aisles picking out new coffee flavors and, as they were leaving, I would advise them to keep every ugly old plaid chair and to guard their bridges carefully. I’m sure they would look at me slightly askance and have no idea what I was talking about and probably talk about me back in their car.  I would just smile and wave knowing I had just provided something you can’t find on a tall metal shelf.

 

I grew up a daddy’s girl.  It was his side of the bed I went to as a little girl when I was sick.  It was his car I looked for in parking lots after school and his shirts I stole to sleep in.  When my family went on a deep sea fishing trip and everyone got violently ill, I left my mom behind and spent the afternoon laying on his stomach above deck with the sun beating down on us both.  Those sounds and smells of that boat–workers yelling and men casting heavy line out into those churning seas and that hot fishy smell- will always be wrapped up with some of my most precious memories of my Dad.  He was my person. Because of this, I was always fascinated with his faith even when I didn’t share it.  It colored everything in his world.  It affected how he treated my mom, how he conducted himself at work, how he dealt with hitchhikers he happened upon.  Everything was filtered through his faith. I lived my entire childhood and early adulthood in the shadow of this man I adored. I really thought I understood what it meant to be a Christian. I thought I was one. I was wrong.

When I was 32 years old, my Dad was diagnosed with a horrible, rare disease. Para Supra Nuclear Palsy. It was a horror nobody could dream up. It lasted six years and it ravaged our family.  Eventually, it would rob us of his voice, his wisdom, his smile and finally, on a beautiful June morning, it would take him. But, long before that morning, it had robbed me of something else–my Dad’s faith and I had parted ways.  I was as angry at God as a person could get.  My Dad didn’t deserve to die the way he did and I didn’t want any part of a God who would allow it.  But, the same wasn’t true of my Dad.  Through those six long years, his faith was the same.  Gentle. Sweet. Solid.

One afternoon in the parking lot of Hobby Lobby, I stood beside his car window and helped him pass the time until my mom and sisters were done shopping. At that point, he could no longer walk very well and having conversations with him was hard.  But, tell me I didn’t try?  I did.  Constantly. I knew I was in the last moments with my father.  My Father.  This big man that had always held my heart.  Anything he had to say I wanted to hear.  Anything.  So, leaning against that dusty door and with my hand on  his I asked him, “Dad, is your faith ok? Are you angry?” Did I want him to say, “Yes”? Maybe.  That, I would have understood.  He had a right to be angry.  He was almost to retirement.  All of the things he had put off to raise all of us were about to happen.  Fishing trips, vacations with Mom, and more visits with grand babies. It was his time.  Instead, his granddaughter was pulling up his socks and his wife was shaving his face for him.  He had no control over anything.

But, he didn’t say yes.  Instead, he struggled to tell me that sometimes he thought that all of this was happening because he still had lessons to learn.  A fine tuning of his relationship with the Lord.  Folks, I would like to say I absorbed what he was saying in a wise way.  But, I didn’t.  My temper flared on a level my Mom would have applauded.

“Dad, how can you even say that?  If you don’t have this figured out then none of us do! That’s the craziest thing I have ever heard.  You are perfect.”

Except, there were cuss words involved. Lots of cuss words.  Normally, I would have never talked that way in front of my Dad, but there wasn’t any normal left to be had. I was just so pissed off.  But in that moment, like so many others, my Dad absorbed my immaturity with love and grace.  He slowly brought his arm from the other side of the car to pat my hand that was resting on his.  I can still see his big hand covering mine.

And then, with his painfully slow speech he said,   “It’s ok.  My worries never touch that peace.”

I knew immediately what he was talking about.  I had grown up hearing that phrase my whole life. When bills couldn’t be paid, when cars broke down, when Mom lost her folks, when he lost jobs. The peace that passeth all understanding.  It’s what my Dad treasured the most about his faith and I had no clue what it really meant. I understood the idea of it, but never the reality.  I cried that day in that Hobby Lobby parking lot and many times after that because I knew I didn’t understand.  And, then, came that day my dad was gone.  A hysterical voice mail on my phone from my Mom confirmed it.  “We lost him Jean Ann. We lost him.” There isn’t a word in the universe that I could type here that would describe that feeling.  I woke up in a world every morning that didn’t contain my Dad.  He was gone.

I went to his funeral. Both of them. I listened to people talk about him.  The stories of him encouraging them and helping them and housing them and changing their lives and I knew it was his faith.  His relationship with his God.  A God that I had sometimes claimed, but didn’t really know.  So, I drove back to Houston with my husband and daughter and a empty heart.  I was swept clean and I had no idea what to do about it.

If you could read my journals from those days you would know how lost I was.  They are full of furious, one-sided, arguments with God.  It hurts me to type this, but I hated Him.  With everything in me.  I hated God and, to deal with that, I walked away from everything I had ever been taught and decided there was no God. But, I still hated.  Then, one day as I was driving down the freeway, a little voice presented itself to me,  “How can you hate someone who isn’t real?”

I’m trying to find the words to bring you into that moment with me.  How huge it was.

It was a dirty windshield, and a mini-van ahead with a “My kid is an honor-student.” bumper sticker, and the universe shifting on its’ axles and the beginning of everything that matters to me now. In that moment, my soul finally acknowledged that God was real and that I had to deal with Him. Really deal with Him.  Not pretend.  Not perform. Not promise. There was this real God out there who knew the real me and we had some things to work out.

I started back at the very beginning.  I was raised in a Christian home and attended more Sunday School classes than anybody should.  I went to Church Camp and Petra concerts and Friday night pizza parties at the local Baptist Church.  I knew the lingo but not the Lord.  So, I decided to fight with God for real.  I checked out book after book about every practiced religion known to man. I wanted to know what everyone else believed. I researched every “gotcha” I thought existed with the Christian faith.  I drove three hours to a particular bookstore to pick up a book I was sure would provide proof that there was absolutely no God.  It didn’t. Nothing did.

And, during that entire time, I took my daughter to church.  I was determined she would be in church even if I was screwed up.  I was hoping she could find what my Dad had even if I couldn’t.  Somewhere, in all of that turmoil, my journal entries changed.  They were no longer written to a God who didn’t exist and that I hated, but to one that was very real and that I needed.  I knew He was there.  I could feel Him.  Not just in church, or when I was reading my Bible, or when I got the best parking place, but in everything.  He was huge.  He was precious.  He was all I wanted.  But, I wasn’t sure He wanted me.

I couldn’t get past the feeling that I had somehow wasted the gift of being raised by my Dad.  And my Mom.  I had grown up in a home where God was celebrated and I had missed it.  Taken it for granted.  Treated it cheaply.  And, I had done so many things that I knew had grieved both of my Fathers.  In short, I sucked. And, again, I had no clue how to get past it.  I was stuck in a never-ending self punishment.  There was no forgiveness for me.  I was doomed to a life without God and I knew that was the worst thing that could happen to anyone.

Then, one day, that small voice presented itself to me again.  “Do you really believe I don’t love you?”  And, in an instant, I didn’t.  I didn’t believe it.  I knew God loved me.  And I knew I loved Him. And life changed.  Forever.

If I could, I would go back to that day in the parking lot and take my Dad’s face between both of my hands and I would kiss him and tell him, “Daddy, I feel it.  I feel the peace. God found me.” And, I would be telling the truth.

Since I lost my Dad, some really awful things have happened.  Happened even after I thought my family had endured all that we could.  My Mom got cancer and beat it. And then got it again. And, I cried in even more parking lots and elevators and, on occasion, HEB. And then, on another June morning,  I lost her too.  I’ve sat in an examining room and had my doctor, with her kind eyes and high- lighted hair, tell me I had Lupus.  I’ve buried friends and been helpless as I’ve watched others live through hell. I’ve watched the news and read Facebook and anguished at how we all hurt each other.  I’ve had to watch young people I love find really spectacular ways to hurt themselves and their future.  Divorce and affairs and drugs.  Miscarriages, abortions, floods and heartache.  The world is a scary, sad place sometimes, but, through it all, I have this little flicker of peace. A small place that says no matter what God loves me.

No matter what I do.  No matter what the President does or who the President is. No matter what my bank account says.  No matter illness or heartbreak or loss.  God loves me.

And, the really amazing thing is that that knowledge is not just for me. Yes, it changed who I am, but it also changes the world.  Because God loves me, I am indifferent to no-one. I can’t be. Your pain is my pain.  Your problems are my problems. Your sin is my sin. We have to find our way together. We are His beloved.  All of us. And, yes, that includes you.  He loves you no matter what you have done or what you are doing this morning.

Throw it out there.  The biggest, darkest, most awful thing you have ever done and it is no match for God.  He can love it all away.  All of it.  Even if you’ve hated Him for a long time, and filled up little blue journals with page after page of how unfair He is.  Even if you’ve never taken one minute to stop and fight with Him or wonder about Him or even question whether He’s real.  Literally, no matter what, He loves you.

I’m not saying that it will be easy.  That you won’t still have a temper, or a sailor-mouth, or a drug problem, or a boyfriend on the side, but from the moment you enter into a real relationship with God and leave all else behind you will begin on a journey that will change you and the world around you. He won’t leave you where you start. And, for every success you have, you will want more. You will come to crave those moments that you find yourself more like Him and less like you. You will find yourself willingly walking away from everything you used to hold valuable for a closer walk with Him.

Someday, you might even find yourself, in a parking lot dying from a disease that takes you bit by bit, and you will still be talking to your lost daughter about the peace that passeth all understanding.   And, she will listen through her tears and hurt and foul language and a seed will be planted.  And, because the Lord adores you, it will bear fruit. And the Lord will let her be lost and angry until He finds her and changes everything.  Then, the true adventure will start.

And, through it all, that little flame of peace will burn.  The peace that passeth all understanding.  A precious gift from a Father who adores you and longs for you.

I used to tell anyone that would listen that I never wanted to get married.  “I’m selfish,” I would say.  And, I was completely serious. I really didn’t want to get married. I didn’t want to take care of anyone and I didn’t want to risk that feeling where you are all in.  One hundred percent, no holds barred, in.  All of that felt way too real to me.  I wanted to care about fewer people and not more.  That felt safer. I was young when I got married, but I had already been to too many tragic funerals.  You could lose people you loved and that terrified me.

Then, one January afternoon at a church Super Bowl party, I met my husband.  I was seconds away from leaving to head to a bar and the crowd stood up and the people shifted and there he was.  Him.  I was introduced, shook his hand, and had an instant feeling of recognition.  “There you are.” my heart said.  I went home that day and told my Grandma I had met the man I was going to marry.  She shook her head and flapped her dish towel at me.  “Oh Jean Ann, you don’t even know if he’s a good one.”  But, she was wrong.  I did know.  I knew that first day I met him and I still know today.

I knew because I watched him take up his space in the world in that quiet, I don’t need the spotlight, way that he has and I understood how rare that was even that first day.  I knew because I watched him give his son permission to go outside to play and then, as we talked, watch him every second without making a big deal out of it.  I knew because I saw him check quietly with the single mom in the group to make sure she had money to cover her lunch at the restaurant we all went to.  That’s what he does.  He goes through life quietly, doing tiny things that mean everything to those lucky enough to live life with him.

I am blessed to be one of those people.  Through our 26 years I have been the recipient of so many small, calm gifts of love from him.  The day he called me in the grocery store and told me to add more pie crusts to my Thanksgiving shopping because he had just sent my Mom and sisters money to come for the holiday.  The moment in the elevator when we looked at each other over my Mom’s head understanding her cancer was back and it wasn’t going away this time. He never said a word, but he grabbed my hand to keep me from falling apart and told her she looked pretty in her hat.  She looked up from her wheelchair and grinned her famous mischievous grin and I breathed again.  The days he spent lining my Dad up with fishing gear and climbing a roof so Dad didn’t have to and mowing his lawn when he couldn’t.  All of the mornings that he has gathered up his keys and his wallet and made sure he had his mug of coffee so he could leave to go to work and take care of us.  He goes through his days taking care of his folks.  It’s who he is.  But, the thing I am most amazed by is that he will never mention any of it.  His good things are never talked about by him. He’s under the radar kind.  And folks, that is the best kind of kind.  In fact, he’ll be mad at me for writing this.  He doesn’t need a lot of fanfare.  He’s just solid and quiet and good.

But, in all fairness, I don’t think I always remember this.  I get irritated at him.  I want him to do things my way.  I’m a jerk. And, I don’t think I am alone in this.  I think we all tend to take our people for granted.  It’s almost a defense mechanism.  If we understood, everyday,  just how amazing the Richards in our life are it would be too much to take. Too much emotion to handle with chores and bills and everything else going on.  But, on a rare day, I think God allows me to fully understand what I have in my sweet husband.  And yesterday, his birthday,  was one of those days.  We had plans to go to lunch with friends that got rained out and then we lost electricity.  I had no present for him, because he couldn’t think of anything he wanted–even after a trip to the Guitar Center.  So, we ended up eating a fast-food burger and then he played his guitar while it poured outside.  It wasn’t exactly a momentous birthday.  But, the last thing he said to me before he went to bed was, “Man, babe, what a good day it was.  I got to go to church and facetime Everett and hang out with you and play my guitar.  It was one of those normal days that’s wonderful. ” Then, he smiled his smile and went off to bed. I sat in my chair tearing up and fully getting it.

He’s a keeper, this sweet man of mine.  And, so I will. I’ll keep him in every way I can.  Keep him the center of my focus.  Keep him in my prayers.  Keep him, as much as possible, from heartache.  And, hopefully, God gives me lots of days where I feel it right down to my toes how lucky I am to have met him and recognized him and to have stood there on that March afternoon with him holding my shaking hands in his warm, strong ones as we joined our lives forever.  He’s my guy and I am better and blessed because of it.  If I had any other wish for our future, it would be that I would become more like him.   I could do with a little quietness and gentleness. Less of a need for fanfare.  More good works that nobody ever knows about. I’m stealing his birthday wish and hoping all of that will come true.  Come to think of it, maybe it is his wish too. I say this because I think there is a good chance that I am difficult. But, even if I am (I am) he’ll love me anyway.  That is also what he does.  He loves me.

Thank God.

Literally.