I’m sitting in the car in the rain. It’s dark outside, and I’m waiting for Emma at her Polynesian Dance class. All of this rain seems unusual for St. George, but I suppose with the record amounts of snow falling everywhere else, rain is what we get.
This afternoon, I put Owen and Lance into the jogging stroller and pushed them around the neighborhood. We stopped to see the muddy cows across the street from the church. The boys were delighted, but try as I might, I couldn't get those suspicious cows to come near the fence. Just as we jogged off, the cows gathered right up to the fence to watch us go.
It was so much harder to push them than I thought it would be. I was so winded by the time I pushed the stroller the last little bit up the trail that I had to stop and walk. I hadn’t quite hit two miles, but the whole last half was a steady uphill on Coyote Springs Drive. That had to be good enough for today.
Yesterday Greg sent me a cute little text-message plea: Could we please try to improve our love life? Pretty please?
I always thought I would be the perfect wife and mother. After all, I had an above-average level of cheeriness, and thanks to my athletic inclination, an abundance of energy. Cheeriness and energy, as everyone knows, are the two pillars of perfect-wife-and-motherhood. Now all I needed to do, I thought as I set out for BYU, was locate a fun-loving guy willing to join forces with me, and ta-da!, we would live the perfectly perfect happily ever after I’d always envisioned myself living.
I finally located that guy on a basketball court, of all places. His athletic inclination was even grander than my own, which, in my opinion, was like icing on the wedding cake—our wedding cake. Oh, he was fun-loving alright. We did all sorts of things together, like spelunking in deep, dark caves, bowling at midnight, and scandalously making out in his apartment complex parking garage (oh, not that scandalously!). Things were rolling along as nicely as a bowling ball between us until one evening I popped up hopefully at his apartment and he was feeling a little tired. Gasp! He mustered up enough energy to take me dinner at T.G.I.Friday’s, but as we sat at our dimly-lit table, I noticed that he wasn’t really in the mood to chit-chat. My heart sank a little at this obvious red flag between us. If we were truly in love, wouldn’t we have endless conversation until the sun rose in the morning? After a quick assessment on my part, I realized he wasn’t anything other than happy to be with me, he was just tired and hoping to eat in silent peace. Perhaps all of the spelunking and bowling and making out at midnight had sapped his energy.
That night, I did some deep thinking. Was he fun-loving? Yes. Was he every thing I had so carefully listed on my things-to-look-for-in-a-husband list? So far, yes! But just in case, I prayed. And I worried. And I hatched a plan, and immediately set it into motion. I had always been told that you could tell what sort of missionary a young man had been by the way he talked about his mission. So, I set out to engage in meaningful conversation about what must have been a fabulous missionary experience in Madrid, Spain. Except I had no idea what it was like to be a missionary in Madrid, Spain. Where everyone is Catholic. Where there are very few members. Where it can get a little discouraging at times.
I quickly noticed that my fun-loving guy wasn’t gushing forth with conversion stories. Hmmm. But he seemed to have really loved Spain—at least all the castles and cathedrals, and the food. I felt a little off-kilter after that. Things weren’t quite going the way I’d always planned.
I decided to try one last sure-fire way to come to know his true character. One night, just before he dropped me off, I suggested that we share our testimonies with one another, at least some of our deep, heart-felt feelings. His sideways glance at me said it all. But I will never again doubt his love for me, because against all his better inclinations, right there in the Deseret Towers parking lot, he shared his testimony. I realized that I had put him completely on the spot. And I tried to forgive him if he lacked a little religious luster. I cheerfully shared mine. And breathed a sigh of relief that we made it past that oft-advised necessary step for a courting couple. Amazingly, he kept dating me--quirks and all. In fact, he asked me to marry him.
The rest is history.
And now nearly eighteen years later, I’m questioning both my cheeriness and my abundance of energy!
All those years ago, when I decided that I would be the perfect wife, I didn’t factor in ANYTHING that resembles our real life. I never could have imagined that my husband would text me and ask us to focus more on our marriage. And that I would feel tired.
So, today, I’m dreaming of the romantic weekend we spent at The Alisal Ranch. And I’m looking forward with so much hope to our week in Hawaii in March. And I’m going to love my husband the best I can until then.
I love that Greg still loves me. And, oh, how I love him. Even if we are a little more on the tired side of things. My marriage is that important to me.
By the way, I texted him back with a resounding: YES! Exactly what I said when he asked me to be his wife. And the rest is history.
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