Posts Tagged ‘heart’

Checking The Details As The Restoration Nears Completion

Posted: July 29, 2011 in Love and Marriage
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So I guess it’s time to take a walk-through of the restoration project.  We’ve reached the point where the “house” is almost finished, and there isn’t much left to do except double-check everything to make sure we haven’t missed anything and that all is complete and in good working order.  Before we put the finishing touches on it and consider it good, let’s see what we have.

We started in the Spring of 2010, where we found a once proud and beautiful home completely run down by years of neglect.  The wife was figuring out how to get out, while the husband was figuring out how to get to work.  We started with the broken wedding ring and began fixing and repairing from there.  The above mentioned husband (yours truly) continued to build love where it had fallen down and build himself up so that he was fit for the task.  That allowed him to begin to build his damaged wife back up, so that they together could eventually rebuild the proverbial house known as their relationship.

Just like there is a lot of ripping out of damaged wood, tearing off of old roofing materials, scraping paint, and sanding floors, so there were a lot of things that had to go from our marriage, and much of it was painful.  The “making new” process involves removing the old, and no matter how difficult or unpleasant, it must be done if the final product is going to actually be better than the old one, as opposed to only looking better.  Covering up the problems would never have saved or restored our marriage.

Just like that wedding ring, our new “house” is much stronger than the old one.  In California, where we recently spent some time, we found out that when older buildings change hands, they have to be retrofitted with building materials and techniques to help them withstand earthquakes.  These aren’t necessarily visible in the final product, nor do they inherently make the structure more aesthetically pleasing, but when destructive forces come against those structures, they have a far greater likelihood of remaining standing.  In some ways, I’m sure our marriage doesn’t look as bright and new as it did in 1996, but now it’s prepared to last for the long haul, no matter what the future may bring.

Exactly one year ago today, the final phase of tearing down and destroying the old was taking place.  As soon as that was done, the day forever known as “the phone call” ushered in the phase of building together.  Instead of me doing the restorative work alone for the purpose of saving the marriage, my wife and I began to restore our marriage together.  About a week into that process, the concept of the restoration tour was conceived and is now nearly complete.

Our lives, both together and as individuals, have been overhauled and now we have a newly restored marriage built on the basis of the original one.  It’s the same foundation, but nearly everything from the ground up has been redone to be better and stronger.  We’ve taken a year to focus, very intentionally, on that single purpose, with this blog serving as a type of documentation of the journey.

Some of the smaller, subtle changes don’t rate an entire blog entry, but are very significant to us nonetheless.  One of the early ones was when my wife began changing her logins on some of her online activity to reflect her new feelings about out marriage.  We also began using new nicknames and endearments for each other.  These just happened naturally, which was much more meaningful than if they had been something forced.

We’ve also become much more protective of each other.  One morning we were riding our bikes and an approaching car got too near my wife.  I yelled at the driver and my wife had never heard that type of fierce tone to my voice before.  She said it was kind of nice to know that I was that determined to protect her.  When we went to my daughter’s graduation, there was a moment where someone approached me while I was upset, and my wife spoke out that I needed a minute and she told the person to back off.  With all we’ve been through, and knowing what it means to have temporarily lost each other, we both have a fierce determination that no one and nothing is going to get too near us if it’s not good for us.

Moving Into “Our” Home – A Different Kind of Restoration

Posted: July 28, 2011 in Love and Marriage
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So, it happened… our California trip got too busy and I missed a couple of days of blogging.  I knew it was a possibility, but now we’re home again and about to finish up with the restoration tour.  We have one more major tour stop and that will take place next week.

It seems like the past year has gone by both really quickly and really slowly at the same time.  When I realize that the year of restoration is almost up, I can hardly believe it.  It seems like only yesterday that I was moving back in and we were putting the pieces of our lives back together.  At the same time, it seems like some of this happened so long ago that it just blends in with all the rest of our past that we share.

So much has changed and so much has remained the same.  The changes have been good and so very necessary.  They haven’t been changes for the sake of change, but they have severed the very roots of some deep-seated issues that we have battled, both as individuals and as a married couple, for much of our lives.  What has remained the same is the fact that we are still the same couple who married way back when, we still have the same memories and history from that marriage, and we are still creating the same legacy, although I believe it will now be even stronger than it would have been, had all of this not taken place.

The two days that we spent moving into our new loft were among the most blessed of all the restoration tour.  When my wife moved into the old loft, it began the most gut-wrenching, heart-tearing episode I’ve ever been through.  The restoration of that phase of our marriage meant as much to me as any part could have.  We had dreamed of having a loft apartment for years, but I never thought that we would end up with one the way that we did.

We spent quite a bit of time looking when we decided to move, and we considered numerous options.  When we walked through the one that is now ours, we both felt it, but it was my wife who leaned over and whispered, “I think this is the one.”  That was all I needed to hear and I told the agent we would take it.  Then, of course, there was the agonized waiting to see if we would be approved, but we were and we decided to move in early, since it was ready.

Our home

We reserved the moving truck, recruited people to help, and everything was all set.  The morning before, we went to a downtown breakfast cafe that we really enjoy and had a leisurely breakfast.  Then we went to the utility company to have the power switched over to the new place.  It sounds silly, but I can’t tell you what a joy it was, and how much it meant to my heart when we stood at the same counter where she had set up utilities only in her name less than a year before and I heard her say, “my husband” when the lady asked her if anyone else would be living at the new address.

We picked up the keys together and started taking some things over in the car that afternoon and evening.  We mainly wanted to get in and take some measurements and kind of get an idea of where things would go when we brought the furniture the next day. We also brought some of the very fragile things and items that might not do well in the moving  truck.

The next morning, we got the truck and did the main moving.  It went really quickly and we were pretty much done by lunch time.  My wife is amazing at unpacking and organizing, and she almost had everything put away where it belonged by the time the truck was empty.  She just stayed in the loft, told everyone where to put things as they came in the door, and started opening boxes and putting things up.

After it was all wrapped up and I had taken the truck back, I picked up a bottle of Champagne and some strawberries, the same things we had shared when she moved into the old loft.  This time, there was no hidden heartbreak underneath the smile, and no fear of what the future would look like.  Champagne has always been a celebratory drink, and we had so much to celebrate and be thankful for.

Love, Laughter, And Jet Lag

Posted: July 26, 2011 in Love and Marriage
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It’s been a very busy time in California, so the blog is coming in late again this evening.  After three days in wine country, we saw a Giants game in San Francisco, then went to Morro Bay to spend a few days with my brother and his family.  We visited San Luis Obispo, a beautiful town that was once reported in a study to have the happiest people in the country, and, of course, we spent time at the beach.

My wife is a very silly person, and we’ve had a lot more fun since getting back together than we ever used to.  Once I learned to stop trying to make her into what I thought she should be and just started accepting her and loving her for who she is, it was amazing how things changed.  During our separation, the first sign that things were really changing was when the laughter started coming back into our relationship.

We hadn’t really laughed together for a long time.  There were times when I wondered if I even remembered how.  In those months when I threw everything into loving her with all my being, the laughter returned.  There were times that we laughed so much, I couldn’t imagine how we had ever gotten so far off track.   I also couldn’t imagine how we could laugh like that and still not be back together, but my wife still had some things she needed to work through and she just wasn’t finished with that process yet.

Today, we spent the day at Yosemite National Park.  It was a place that she really wanted to go, and it meant a lot to experience it together.  It is so vast and breathtaking that we only saw a small part of it in the six hours or so we were there.  We ate a picnic lunch at the top of glacier peak, climbed up to one of the waterfalls amidst the spray, and explored some of what the park has to offer.  On the way back, we ate at a Mexican restaurant, then laughed and acted silly all the way back to Fresno, where my brother lives.

During this whole trip, we’ve spent a lot of time feeling the healing power of love and laughter.  We take silly pictures of each other, like the ones we took today with the huge stuffed bear in the park gift shop.  We joke about anything and everything while riding in the car.  There is a freedom that hasn’t always been there, and it brings us closer together when we play and laugh.

As tired as we’ve been from all the activity and the time change, we haven’t gotten grouchy or snapped at each other.  My body has been totally wiped out during a lot of this trip from all the sun and being on a completely different time schedule than usual, but my spirits have been bright because of all the fun we’ve had.  I still have a hard time letting go sometimes, but I see how much it brings my wife closer to me when I do.  Yes, Yakov Smirnoff, it’s true – where there is love, there is laughter, and where there is laughter, there is love.

The Show Must Go On… With or Without Us

Posted: July 25, 2011 in Love and Marriage
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Chicago is not only one of our favorite cities, it’s also one of my wife’s favorite musicals.  While I will readily admit that it was not only not one of my favorites, but one that I really disliked for a long time, I have come around to it over the years.  I still don’t like the storyline, but watching my wife dance around the kitchen while she cooks and listens to the soundtrack is one of life’s true pleasures.

For a long time in our marriage, I didn’t share my wife’s love of the theater and of musical productions.  I tolerated her buying soundtracks and I listened to her tell me that she wanted to go see productions onstage, but never took it seriously or ever really considered going to plays.  I didn’t see it as something that was worth spending the money on, so I just avoided it and she never pushed.

She has pretty much always been willing to try to let me get to do the things that I like, even when she has no interest in them.  Sometimes she has gone with me and learned to participate in some of my hobbies like golf or fishing, and other times she has just encouraged me to go because she knows they are things that I like to do.  I have been the more selfish person in the earlier years of our marriage, and if I didn’t want to do something, it pretty much wasn’t going to happen.

When we moved downtown, we were very close to the theaters and would always walk by the posters for the upcoming productions.  Around the time that we got back together, our little theater was putting on Cats and my wife really wanted to go.  I wasn’t really interested, but part of our new relationship was trying to be unselfish and giving her what she wanted and needed, so I was willing.

I procrastinated buying the tickets so badly that when we finally went, it was to the very last show and we could only get standing room tickets.  Despite my blowing it with not getting us seats, she still loved the play, and it really affected me to see the way her face lit up and how much she enjoyed the experience.  It was our first time to the theater together, but it wouldn’t be our last.

When December came, we planned to go to the production of Miracle on 34th Street.  Once again, I put it off and put it off until I finally discovered that there were no more shows that had two seats together left for sale.  We weren’t going to go and not sit together, so we ended up missing it altogether.

I knew that they were putting on Chicago in April of 2011 and after these two disappointments with trying to get tickets at the last minute, I knew I couldn’t take the chance with Chicago.  I went to the box office before Christmas and bought the tickets and gave them to my wife for a 12 days gift.  On the one hand, it was somewhat lame in that she got them for Christmas, but the play wasn’t for four months.  On the other hand, it showed her that I realized how important it was to her and that I was making it a priority to make sure that she got to go and there was no worry or stress over tickets or seats.

Not only did she get to see Chicago and loved it, but we have since made it to a number of productions and it has become something that we both enjoy and look forward to. I bought her a Chicago poster that was signed by the entire cast and now hangs on the wall in our loft.  I gave her something you can’t buy, and that is the gift of fulfilling one of her wishes and desires.

Lucky February 13

Posted: July 22, 2011 in Love and Marriage
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Valentine’s Day is supposed to be the most romantic day of the year, when couples celebrate love, and singles try to create a spark with the one they have their hopes set on.  It’s also a very stressful day for a lot of people due to all of the expectations, and it’s one of the times that it’s most common for people to break up.  Lucky for my wife and I, we had been through all of the breaking up and getting back together when Valentine’s Day arrived, so there was little or no stress, and the only expectation was that we would continue to experience the joy of the love that we had renewed.

Even so, I was determined to make this Valentine’s Day one to remember.  For weeks ahead of time, I was searching the web for creative ideas and ways to make it unique.  No last-minute reservations and flowers this year.  I was on a mission to shower my wife with romance and this “holiday’ just gave me an excuse to go overboard.

The actual Valentine’s Day was on a Monday this year, which obviously doesn’t work well, but that gave me the weekend to turn into, you guessed it, a more-than-one-day celebration.  Sunday was the 13th, and it was also the day that the University near our loft was hosting a stage production of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, my wife’s favorite fairy tale.  It was an afternoon performance, so that allowed me to buy tickets to the play and then make dinner plans for afterward.

I started with a special surprise on Saturday night.  I had ordered some ebooks online, and one of them had complete instructions for giving a one hour, full body relaxation massage.  My wife has always loved back rubs (don’t all women?), and I’ve always been glad to give them, but with this, it was taking it to another level.  This was an example of giving a gift of myself, and knowing my wife well enough to know what would really be meaningful to her.  It’s also a gift that she can use over and over again.

Saturday evening, I warmed up some towels and massage oil, lit candles and an aromatherapy oil burner, and put on a relaxation cd on the stereo.  I had her lay down and I explained what I had bought and what I was going to do.  Needless to say, she loved it, and there have been many such massages taken advantage of since then.  Anyone can learn to do this, and it gives a couple a very intimate time to spend together, where you can also use words to complement, reassure, and build up your partner.

The following day was to be our Valentine’s Day, even though it would be February 13, not the 14th.  I had a number of things planned, and I’ll share them in tomorrow’s post.  The 13th would turn out to be a lucky number indeed.

Vacationing In Wine Country

Posted: July 21, 2011 in Love and Marriage
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My wife and I are currently vacationing in California wine country.  I will make every effort not to miss a day with the blog (it ends August 6th), but the posts may be shorter and less direct over the next several over days.

It’s been a dream of mine to take my wife to wine country for a few years now.  She’s never been to California, while I’ve been many, many times.  As a kid who grew up in Phoenix, California was always just a few hours away, and it was almost always Southern California that my family visited.

As an adult, it has been northern California, and specifically Napa and Sonoma counties that have caught most of my attention.   I’ve been a wine writer as well as a teacher since the early 2000’s, so in recent years, I’ve had the opportunity to take press trips to wine country, not only in California, but overseas as well.  My wife has never been able to accompany me on any of these trips, and that has led to some of the dichotomy of feelings that both of us experienced during the time leading up to, and including, our separation.

What I mean is this.  When I wasn’t completely sure that I wanted to continue to be married, I still cared about my wife very much.  She had been my best friend and partner for many years, and I valued her company.  When I would spend time away from her on these trips, I always wished she could be there.  I wanted her to be meeting the people I was meeting, tasting the food and wine that I was tasting, and experiencing the lifestyle that I was living.  As great as these trips could be, something was always missing, and that something was her.

On the other hand, there was a part of me that wondered what it would be like if we didn’t stay together.  A part of me thought that maybe I would be able to move to another part of the country and live a whole new life on my own, and these trips also had the effect of reinforcing that notion.  When I was traveling with other writers, I was known to them only as myself, not as one half of a couple, and this part of my life seemed totally separate from the part that had a wife and family and a full-time teaching career.

I was never unfaithful to my wife while I travelled, although I know she worried at times.  What I mostly wanted was for her to be there.  Nevertheless, my life had two contradictory parts competing, and only one could win out.  When my wife was exploring the idea of making a new life without me, she was experiencing many of these same emotions and thought patterns.  She was testing out a future that would require her to leave her current life behind, but still clinging to the wish that it would be me that she would experience true love and companionship with.

Now that we are well on our way to happily ever after, I got the chance to share this part fo my life with her.  My parents bought us plane tickets to California so we could spend some time with my brother and his family.  Since we were coming to the state anyway, I set up some winery tours and visits through some of the people I have worked with.  We are spending the first few days in Sonoma County and the Napa Valley, and my wife is having a wonderful time, as am I.  It’s another little dream coming true for us, and I couldn’t be more proud to introduce her to everyone and have her share this time with me.

Snow Days and Silly Fun

Posted: July 20, 2011 in Love and Marriage
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Very often, in the process of restoring an older house, you run into things that you weren’t expecting.  You have to re-think, adjust, change your plans.  There can be an awful lot of “now what?” moments.  Those are the times that you can either choose to get upset that things aren’t going the way you want them to, or get creative and see them as an opportunity to come up with something new and different.

As  teachers in the Missouri Ozarks, snow days are the reality we live with nearly every winter.  Snow days interrupt the normal flow of life, and while kids almost universally hope and pray for snow days, teachers and parents don’t always share their sentiments.  For a kid, the future is this afternoon, or tomorrow.  They don’t look much beyond that, and any day out of school is a good day as far as they are concerned.

For me, snow days have not been very well received in the past.  The way I looked at it was this:  My lesson plans were going to get off track, and we were going to have a day off when the weather was terrible, thus having to give up a spring holiday when the weather probably would have been nice.  Worst case scenario was that we would have to tack make-up days on to the end of the school year, so summer vacation would be shortened.

This last winter, we had an especially high number of snow days, so much so that all of the above happened.  An interest thing happened, though.  My wife and I were in a completely different place in our relationship than we had ever been before during a winter.  Our nest was empty, so we didn’t have the kids to figure out what to do with, and we were very much in the honeymoon stage of back togetherness.  I still didn’t want to have to lose holidays or go to school longer than we were scheduled to, but these snow days came in a different flavor than the ones from past years.

This year’s snow days were an opportunity to stay in the warmth of the loft and watch the storm through the windows.  They were times for cooking together, making hot chocolate, movie marathons, building jigsaw puzzles, and lots of cuddling.  Since we live downtown, we would also brave the snow to walk to nearby places such as The Cup (a cupcake specialty shop), several nearby coffee shops, or the Bistro Market, our downtown grocery and bistro.

My fondest memory of last winter’s snow days was something that would never have even been a thought in previous years.  My wife and I don’t watch TV.  At all.  We don’t have cable, satellite, or any type of television service.  We’re just not interested.  Somehow, though, our oldest daughter got us interested in the show Big Bang Theory.

She buys whole seasons of shows on DVD and she had three seasons worth of Big Bang Theory.  She loaned us season one just to get us to try it.  My wife liked it right away, and I came around to it after a few episodes.  During the snow days last winter, we ended up going through all three seasons, cuddled up on our new couch and laughing together.  It was entirely silly fun, but whenever I think about the old loft and last winter, those are some of the memories that are best and brightest.

There’s Joy In The Knowing

Posted: July 19, 2011 in Love and Marriage
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When my wife was making her decision to choose to stay married, and asking me to come back to her, one of the things she said was, “You know me so well.”  She was referring to my knowing what she liked and how to take good care of her.  That only happens in relationships that have lasted a long time.

To know another person deeply and completely is part of the very nature and fabric of what marriage is supposed to be.  It’s supposed to be for life, and within that commitment and unconditional love should be the freedom to fully reveal yourself to another.  Each person should be able to know and trust the other fully, and be accepted and loved for who they are.

Like so many things, this knowledge, over a long period of time, can be either a strength or a weakness.  One weakness is that we can assume we know all there is to know about the other person and no longer make the effort to try to learn more about what is going on inside him or her.  Another is that people can feel that they no longer have much to talk about, because they have already disclosed everything about themselves to their partner.

We found that we could see how well we know each other as a strength in our relationship.  For us, it has become a source of fun and joy that we can finish each other’s sentences and that we often know what the other is thinking without either of us having to say a word.  Rather than see it as boring and old, we see it as some of the glue that binds us so tightly together.

Just the other day, we were invited to lunch by a lady who worked at the school with us last year.  At one point, my wife and I were talking about something and the other lady made the comment that we had obviously been together for a long time.  We hadn’t realized it, but she was hearing a conversation that made no sense to her, yet she could see that we were understanding each other perfectly.

One day, shortly after we had gotten back together, my wife and I were in the car and I had the air conditioner on.  My wife reached up and flipped one of the vents all the way up and I asked her, “Is it too cold?”  Then I immediately starting laughing and answered for her, because in that instant, I realized that I already knew exactly what she was going to say.  She would have said, “No, I just don’t like it blowing in my face.”

The reason I knew this was that we had been having that exact same exchange for 14 years.  What made me laugh was that it had taken me until then to realize it.  For almost a decade and a half, she had flipped up the vent, and I had asked the same question and received the same answer.  I guess the reason it clicked that day was that, having been apart and then reunited, we were in the unique position of having all that body of knowledge about each other, but living in the dynamic of a brand new relationship, where we were really paying close attention to each other.

Since then, we have been “getting to know each other” all over again and celebrating both new things we are learning about each other, and things we already know.  When we went to Eureka Springs recently, we found out what each other’s favorite candy bar was.  We each thought we already knew, but that was based on old information that had changed over the years.  It’s fun discovering that there are still things to learn, and it really helps eliminate the tendency to take each other for granted, or get into a rut with our relationship.

About a week ago, we were in the car and my wife said to me, with affection in her eyes, “Who else could I say fried tickers to and would know what I mean, or make the car sound and would laugh every time?”  She recognized while we were apart that the grass isn’t greener on the other side, and the unknown isn’t as pleasing as the one who knows you so well and loves you completely.

Love Is A Verb

Posted: July 18, 2011 in Love and Marriage
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Love is a verb.  Yes, that can be a cliché, but there’s a lot of truth where that statement comes from.  To paraphrase a speaker I once heard, love makes a much better verb than noun.  Love as a noun is something people have never quite been able to grasp.  What is it?  It’s too mysterious and too abstract to function well as a noun.

As a verb, love becomes visible and tangible.  You can see it, feel it, experience it, and do it.  In fact, you have to, if your “love” is ever going to be anything more than a feeling.  Hear me on this; love is something you make, and to make something requires action.

Mort Fertel’s “marriage fitness” concept was one of the things I used to save my marriage.  It was a powerful idea to me, being a fitness person, that you can “make love” by doing actions like giving gifts, using kind words, spending fun time together, and building another person up.  When my wife said she only felt friendship toward me, but didn’t feel love anymore, I “made love” where there was no feeling.  I built those feelings in the same way an athlete builds muscle or stamina.

It took time and it took committment.  It was a day after day, week after week, month after month process.  A 90 pound weakling doesn’t go to the gym two or three times and expect to look in the mirror and see a muscular physique.  It takes work, but that person can and will build muscle if he stays with it and does what it takes.

I know lots of people who talk about wanting to be more fit, but they don’t do the things you have to do to be fit.  They make excuses instead of dong the work.  No one has time, but some people make the time.  When they start, they don’t stick with it.  They fail to follow through either because they aren’t seeing results, other things interfere, they don’t want to spend the money, or they perceive it as being just too difficult.

It’s the same way with a failing relationship.  I didn’t see results from my wife for a long time, but I kept doing the actions.  I got discouraged and distracted at times, but I kept doing the actions.  I made a decision that I wanted my wife’s love more than I wanted any other thing this world had to offer, and I stuck with it, no matter what.  Too many people say, “I tried, but it didn’t work,” when they weren’t in it for the long haul.  They wanted the quick fix, but fizzled when it was going to take much more time and work than they bargained for.

Now, my reality is this:  Once in shape doesn’t mean always in shape.  A person who is physically fit will begin to decline after only 72 hours of no physical exercise.  Once I had built up that love and had my wife securely in my heart and life once again, the work wasn’t finished.  In fact, if I want a happy love life, it will never be finished.  Just like if I want to stay in shape, I can never quit exercising.

When I get up in the morning, I very rarely feel like going to the gym, or getting on my bike, or hitting the running trail.  If I only worked out when I felt like it, I rarely ever would, and I wouldn’t be in shape.  I go and do it anyway, because I’m committed to the results, and that requires me to go through the process, because you don’t get one without the other.  So it is with my marriage.  I’m committed to doing the same things now that I did to save my marriage, because if I don’t, my marriage fitness will begin to decline, just like my physical fitness will decline if I stop working out.

People want more love in their marriage.  They want more romance, more spontaneity, more fun.  Do the actions.  That’s how it works.  It’s simple.  It’s not easy, but it is simple.  You won’t always feel like it.  Do it anyway.  Your spouse won’t always respond the way you hope for. Keep doing it.  Commit to the results if it’s the results you want.

It doesn’t have to be big things.  It doesn’t need to be fancy restaurants, expensive gifts, elaborate dates, or the like, although those things have their place.  It can be the little things, like really listening when your spouse needs to talk, remembering what he or she likes and showing up with it as a surprise, choosing to say words that build up and never tear down, and lending a helping hand at the right moment.

I’m committed to results, and that means doing what it takes.  Here’s the best part.  It’s so much more than worth it.  I never knew that our love could be this good.  It wouldn’t be without the work and the actions that have built it up and made it what it now is.  That’s why love is best understood as a verb.

Girls Just Want To Run… And Be Loved

Posted: July 17, 2011 in Love and Marriage
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Yesterday morning was the annual Girls Just Wanna Run 5K.  It’s the largest women’s only run/walk event in the state of Missouri.  It’s also one of the runs my wife participated in last year while we were separated.

This year, it was bigger than ever, with over 1.000 registrants and well over 900 actually completing the course.  As I did last year, I volunteered so that I could be part of it, although obviously, not as a runner.  Lots of husbands and boyfriends serve as traffic directors, man the water stations, etc.  I try to get stationed near the start of the course so that I can see my wife go by, then get to the finish line in time to be there for her after the last person passes my intersection.

As a traffic director, I get to watch hundreds and hundreds of women pass by, but I only have eyes for one.  Last year, as my wife came by, she was sort of on the outside of a fairly large group of runners, so she was more or less running right toward me.  I smiled and said a quick encouraging word (which she didn’t hear because she had her headphones in), but she gave me a high five, and I was pretty much on cloud nine with that.

This race was deep into our separation and was at a time when it was really sinking in that she might not choose me or ever come back to me.  That little gesture, and really any sign of friendship or affection at that point, went a long way with me.  At last year’s finish, she was exhausted from the extreme heat and disappointed with her time.  We hung around for some of the activities and door prizes, and also just so she could have a chance to recover from the heat and humidity.

After the race, they held a zumba demonstration, put on by some instructors from a local fitness center.  My wife was looking for a new zumba class and wanted to meet one of the teachers.  We went over and talked to him about the class, and at one point, he asked, is this your husband?  There was way too long a pause before she said yes, and I was really struggling with fears and doubts.  I knew that as fit and attractive as she was, she would have no problem getting pretty much whoever she wanted, and I didn’t know at that point how to make her want me.

Thank goodness it was always me that she really wanted deep down and I was able, with God’s help, to show her enough to make her believe that things were going to be right again between us.  She just needed to believe that I was really going to love her forever the way I had promised to so many years ago.  That race would be the last one she would run in before we were together again, although it didn’t seem possible that day.

Of course, this year’s race was an entirely different story.  I got an enthusiastic high five from her at the turn, and there was no doubt that we both felt the same way.  It was hot again, but her time was quite good and she nearly finished in the top 10% of the field.  She was still disappointed in her standing in her age group, but I kept telling her, “you beat almost 900 people today.”

It was wonderful to be a couple afterwards, instead of me feeling like a tag along that she may or may not have wanted to be hanging around.  We knew quite a few people at the race, and most of them have never known us as anything other than a committed husband and wife.  That’s how quickly and completely things can turn around, and that’s why you need to never give up if you’re struggling or fighting for your marriage.  Keep believing and do what you need to do, but never give up.  There’s always hope.

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