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Everyone sleeps.
If someone is not sleeping, they make noises about it to anyone who will listen, because in the absence of complete rest, we crumble.
There is something tender about sharing this vulnerable time with your spouse. Your guard is down, you disengage with your surroundings, your heart rate slips into an easy rhythm. The blood supply to your muscles increases, and your body has a chance to heal.
When my small children would worry about a small cut, I reassured them that God fixes hurts when our eyes are closed, to keep His work a secret.
Marriages sleep too. They sway between fierce and frantic activity that jumbles and bumbles through our extended days, and slumping into bed for those truncated nights.
But God is efficient with the scant hours in which we submit to His safekeeping. Some marriages simply heal.
I have read studies that track unhappy marriages over time. In a surprising number of them, five years after reporting that they are dissatisfied with their relationship, husbands and wives respond differently. They tell the researchers that they are now content. This is not always a result of counseling or drastic changes. Sometimes couples just grow.
I know I did. I used to complain about things that seemed unconscionable to me a few years into the game. Once I ranted to a friend that John had clipped all the oleander bushes and left the trimmings where they lay. Didn't she think that was terrible? She paused.
"Well at our house I do the trimming and the picking up," was all she said. Unfinished chores fell off my list of unforgivable sins.
One of my annoyances has been around bringing in groceries. When I shop it is often during the weekday, so there is no one to help lug the bags in from the car. When John goes it is on the weekend, so he fully expects the troops to stop whatever they are doing and join the brigade. This inequity bugged me more than it should. Which is not at all, really. The other day I visited a man in the hospital for whom carrying bags of food is no longer an option. On the way home I stopped at Trader
Joe's. When I arrived in the driveway I pulled open the trunk and started unloading it. There was no need to ask for assistance. The ability to carry peanut butter and bread had suddenly become a gift. John came running out, apologizing for not helping.
"It's fine. I am grateful both for the food and the strength to lift it."
Twenty years ago I was rock certain that John's tendency to not hand in receipts meant that he does not love me. I built a frenetic case of righteousness in my mind. Then I let it go for awhile. I slept on it for a year or so. Now I am calmer about it. I try to rescue the receipts from his email and pockets and submit them. He has not really changed. I have.
Sometimes we need to close our eyes and let God do the healing.
"You can close your eyes, it's alright."
Love,
Lori
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