Behind Every Great Man…

  Guess what I can do with a 102 degree fever?  Several  loads of laundry.  Make dinner.  Help with homework.   Do the dishes.  More laundry.  Sign permission slips.  Write a blog.   Guess what my husband can do with a 102 degree fever?  Moan.  Suggest concern that he may be dangerously close to experiencing a febrile seizure and should we consider heading to the ER?  More moaning.  Ask me again if he should “take something.”   I tease him about this relatively insignificant and infrequent display of “weakness.”  Really, I shouldn’t.  Because guess what else he can do?   Kill scorpions.  We live in the desert; there is an abundance of scorpions.  He’s a crack shot and he’ll even get up from a sound sleep to take one out if I find one in the middle of the night.  He never complains even though he knows I could handle this myself.  Because he also knows how much I hate bugs.  Or arthropods.   Whatever creepy phylum they belong to, they are icky.   Fix almost anything.  He just knows how to do stuff.  I know how to do almost nothing mechanical except spell it correctly.  When we first started dating I once watched him calibrate his car’s timing belt.  I still have no clue what that even is.  But it was one of the sexiest things I’ve ever seen.   Stay up at night figuring out how to pay our mortgage.  And our teen driver’s insurance.  And college.  And retirement.  And trips to Disneyland.  And my shoe habit.  Yet, he never fails to acknowledge that this silver and gold is ours to enjoy but never tightly retain.  And so He gives back to God first.  And to His people in need.  With our money, his time, and his talents.   Love our babies.  With ooey gooeyness that makes his eyes brim with tears when they are in pain or when he’s proud of them or when he allows himself to think about how briefly they get to be only ours.  And which once made our oldest actually lament that “dad might just love me too much.”  It’s a love that drives him to pray with them and for them and make them help with the landscaping and the plumbing repairs so that one day their wives can be amazed at how they just know how to do stuff.   Make me laugh and call me princess.  Treat me with tenderness and express reverence for my abilities and gifts.  Regularly tell our boys that I am the best mother they could ever have.  Even when it’s been a very bad day all around and I hardly deserve such accolades.   Grieve for the lost.  With real heartache and unashamed desire for them to know Christ and cross into life.  It’s the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen.  He is a great man.   But behind every great man might be a woman complaining about what he isn’t instead of celebrating all that he is.  Calculating his flaws instead of counting his strengths.  Tearing him down instead of cheering him on.  Oh, but I’ve intimately known that woman.   Nobody likes that chick.  She’s not so great.   So, I do strive to be the great woman behind my great man.  His biggest fan and his most trusted confidante.  To believe in him and revel in his innate greatness.   It’s a daily decision to rise to this calling – not always easy.  Really important endeavors rarely are.   Tonight I’ll just start by bringing him some tea and assuring him I’ve Googled the warning signs of a febrile seizure and he’ll be ok.   I believe in him.