Reflection of Eleven Years

At some point in the middle of the night, on the eve of our eleventh wedding anniversary, my husband managed to yet again surprise me. Traditionally, he is a *gifted* surpriser. He enjoys very much thinking up new ways to surprise me on my birthday, Valentine's Day, Mother's Day or our anniversary. The most common thing he does is awaken me at some ghastly hour when I'm barely cognitive. When he does this, it's usually the gift that surprises me.

Last night I thought I had it figured out. I was expecting an early start. However, I awoke - on my own - at around 4:00 a.m., to find the shadow of this in the corner of my room:

(Note the perfect place for my children's art work.....)

My heart was glad and I smiled. I realized that he must have snuck out in the middle of the night to his *secret hiding place* in order for me to see this when I woke up. I found out later that his *secret hiding place* was out on the deck. Since it had rained nonstop for two days, the deck was left vacant and thus a safe place. I smiled as I imagined him creeping out onto the cold deck in the middle of the night to retrieve my prize.

This trait is one of the sweetest things about my husband.

While driving in the car the other night, I told both of the kids that daddy and I will be married eleven years on Saturday. My ever-inquisitive son piped up and said:

"Then Hannah came along? Then me?"

Tears came to my eyes. "Yes, Seth. You and Hannah are God's gifts to daddy and I," I answered.

I sit in awe of the last eleven years. There has been some extremely tough times when I didn't know if we would make it, as I am sure there are in most marriages. But tonight I have a grateful heart. I am married to a man who wasn't raised to have kindness. I am married to man who was taught to fight back hard or else you would be trampled on. I am married to a man who didn't have birthday parties and where birthdays were more of a verbal comment than anything else. Yet, through eleven years, I have seen him strive to be kind, because it's not his natural tendency. I have seen him learning to bite his tongue and not fight me back when I wanted to do nothing but fight.

And I am married to man who makes national holidays out of every special occasion in our family and perfected them to a fine art. He could actually teach seminars to other men on "how to make your family supremely happy on their special days". He could show men how to make their wive's day on a very limited budget.

My husband is NOT stingy. He puts my wants before his needs. The other day I called him to ask him if I could buy this couch (pictured above), which our neighbour was selling for $80.00. (Pretty good deal if you ask me......my couch of 16 years was starting to fall apart). Without hesitation he said that I could. When we are not budgeted for a couch AT ALL, $80.00 is a lot of money out-of-budget. He shops for his kids when he has a little extra - for no reason at all but that he loves to surprise them.

So, eleven years later, we are both still growing. Still striving to improve our relationship and our walk with God. We are not stagnating.

And I am so very thankful for this man that I married.