An Attitude of Gratitude

An Attitude of Gratitude

Last night, after a romantic date consisting of pizza, groceries, and a car wash—all of which we had two kids along for the ride—we tucked said kids in bed and my husband and I sat down in the living room.

I picked up a book on the coffee table and looked at the date it was published. 1998 didn’t seem like that long ago, until my right brain-self stumbled through the math.

I held up the book. “This was published almost twenty years ago!” My husband looked at me, patiently waiting for the punchline. I declared, “We’re getting old!”

He shrugged. “That’s okay.”

I tossed the book back on the coffee table. “But I want to drink the marrow from the years!”

Accustomed to my dramatic turns of phrase, my husband just smiled. “We are. There’s nothing I would change.”

Those words an example of his effortless balance of me that just slays my heart. I got up from the chair and smothered him on the couch. I touched his brown hair and said, “What should I blog about this week? The skunks or the chicken coop as a metaphor for heaven?”

He paused. “Well, I was going to say definitely not the first one, but now . . . I’m not so sure.”

“Maybe I should study more about heaven before I compare it to a coop.”

“Maybe so.”

I sighed and looked around. “I like our little house. It’s perfect for our family.”

“I like the floor,” he said. “I bet we’d be shocked if we saw the old one.”

“Crazy how I sweep it without seeing it, and when you first put it down, I couldn’t get over how pretty it was.”

That’s when I knew what I would blog about this week.

After my husband’s brain surgery, I promised God that, if He would just grant my husband his health, then I would never get dissatisfied with anything again.

That I would delight in finding my husband’s damp towel tangled up in the drawer of the bathroom cabinet, where it would begin to mold until I happened upon it while looking for toilet paper.

That I would never become impatient when something like a bathroom remodel took second fiddle to building a chicken-killing station in the barnyard.

That wasn’t the case.

Soon after the Mayo neurosurgeon told my husband his MRI and CAT scans were clear, I began to go back to my old normal. I forgot to hug him so tightly each morning that I could feel his once-sizable space bubble pop.

I forgot what it was like to stand in front of the window, watching my husband walking carefully around in the snow, terrified he would fall but more terrified of stripping him of his independence by making him come inside.

I forgot what it was like to stand in the kitchen—my knife poised on the chopping board—and hear him chopping wood for the first time after surgery, a staccato lullaby.

Instead, I began offering suggestions when my husband sipped his coffee in the morning and asked the question, which I pretended wasn’t rhetorical, “What should I tackle today?”

Time had passed—the danger had passed—and I forgot to cherish the miracle of my husband’s life. I forgot and began tromping across the new floor of our marriage without remembering how the old one had looked before emergency surgery gutted us down to our foundational bricks.

Then I happened upon a social media post asking for prayer for a beautiful woman, who was preparing for an incredible battle that our battle this winter could barely touch.

I felt physically ill. I almost wept while hanging clothes on the line, praying for this stranger without words—my spirit humming inside me like an electrical current.

How could I go back so quickly? How could I take my husband for granted, when I could be a widow right now? When my daughters could be fatherless?

I prayed for that couple—for that wife, her husband, and their precious, special needs child—and I thanked God for listening to my prayer and giving me back my husband. I then hung a towel on the line and recognized it as the one I had pulled, musty and damp, from the bathroom drawer two days ago.

I pressed the scratchy cotton to my face and declared in my heart that I would not forget to be grateful. To be satisfied with this simple, beautiful life. That I would drink the proverbial marrow from the year’s bones, even if that meant something as simple as snuggling my husband on the couch while our children sleep. Even if that meant being content when his to-do list does not coincide with mine.

For life is not a to-do list to be conquered but an imperfect journey to be shared, hand in hand.

How do you maintain an ‘attitude of gratitude’?