Marriage Moats-Remind Me

Published: Tue, 10/18/11

Marriage Moats

Caring for Marriage

(If you want to hear Lori read the story click) here

Watches are handy. They can remind you of what you wanted to do. Last week a woman forgot to bring her daughter to sewing class, and when she remembered it was too late. No little doll dress that day.

My sons are excited about the reminding feature on the new IPhone 4S. It will remind them of all kinds of things. I think you can even use it to remind someone else, which would have a fabulous effect on reducing my tendency to nag John. This is one instance where triangulation could be a good thing, putting an app between me and my husband as buffer.

I wear two bracelets. One says With God All Things are Possible, and the other has a quote from Corinthians.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast. It is not proud, it is not rude. It is not self seeking, it is not easily angered. It keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

I wear them to remind myself what love is, in case I forget. Like yesterday.

Benjamin sometimes gets mad. He bites himself, and whacks things. Once he was so frustrated with a fly buzzing around he said the worst thing he could conjure up.

"I am going to take that fly's name in vain!"

But yesterday his anger went in a different direction: the window. It broke under the force of his fist. He was shocked, and the anger flew from his hand into me.

"THAT WAS VERY VERY VERY NAUGHTY!!!!! I yelled.

As chance would have it we had to leave for an appointment to get his blood drawn, something we do but twice a year. So we were yanked from the scene of the crime to an irritatingly slow waiting room. We sat there, me sulking, and Benjamin talking about what had happened, tossing blame around to various movie characters.

"This is all Family Guy's fault!!"

Then he did something he has never done before. He noticed my bracelet.

He took off the one with the description of love, and started reading it. His attention to the words brought them to my awareness too, which was even more annoying than the long wait. I was busy holding a grudge and did not especially want to remember that those feelings are not consistent with love. I watched him, wondering if he even knows what a "keeping a record of wrong" is. He may not, but I do, and I was clamped on for dear life.

If I was willing to notice, he was at that moment being perfectly cooperative. He knew that a total stranger was about to jab him with a sharp needle, and yet he sat more compliantly than I was, for whom there was no threat pending. Love would let go of what happened at home, and deal with it later, calmly.

It was after all just a pane of glass. I can buy another at Home Depot for loose change. But if I break my promise to love my husband and children, it is not so easily replaced. And the pain lasts much longer.

Photo by Joy Feerrar

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