It is summer of 2014 as I write. My husband and I are Facetiming right now while he is deployed to the Middle East for the military. As you have observed, while he and I are "talking," I am writing. We are having what I think of as Secondary Quality Time. My husband wanted to see me and hang out with me, but he had stuff to do. My husband did not announce this to me, I simply noticed that he wasn't really listening to anything I was saying and was looking at other stuff. 

I could have pouted and gotten snippy with him for blowing me off. Instead, I thought: "No biggee." I adjusted accordingly and started writing you. He's very happy to see his lovely wife and feel as if I'm in the room with him, but --oh wait he's talking--

He told me about a photographer who took some pictures on one of his airdrops. Something funny happened that made the picture look like no one was flying the airplane. Now he's staring at some paperwork again so I am writing again. Let's call it Being Together But Working in Our Separate Cubicles. Now is not the time for me to bring up anything important, ask him any questions or expect him to be able to concentrate on my feelings.

Our husbands cannot gaze at us lovingly and give us two hours of undivided attention all the time. They have a lot of stuff to do, and sometimes they just want us to hang with them. Once a few months ago, I plopped down on the driveway and watched my husband change the oil on our car. He could not really talk about anything, as guys generally do not multi-task. "Dude, I'm changing the oil," a husband might think. "How can I also talk?" 

Now if that had been you or me, we could stir the spaghetti sauce with a spoon in our mouth while we held the baby, cradled the phone in our shoulder talking our friend through her toddler's temper tantrum while petting the dog with our foot. But I respect the one-thing-at-a-time nature of men. While my husband changed the oil, he was glad I was there. When he was finished, he smiled at me and said, "You're my girl." Hearing those words cheered my heart just as much as a meaningful long, conversation would have. 

Oh, and that picture of the football player? One, I think it is so incredibly sweet to see a big strong man kneel down and pray. And two, our men are busy and have heavy things weighing on their hearts. I'm happy to be my husband's adoring cheerleader sometimes, standing in the sidelines. 

I humbly appreciate that my husband works and wants me to stay home so I can rock my domestic swag. I love that he loves that I love the homemaker gig. Dig? Are we rapping or are we writing? Don't need to be fighting.

Got yo money in the bag y'all. Love yo honey not the grab y'all.

I'm tryin' ta be real. I gotta void ta fill.

I agree, I'll stick to blogging. But yes, my husband and I get along about money pretty well. My 12-year-old daughter told me she reads books in which the children's parents fight and shout at each other about the bills. She said, "When I read these books I think, 'Why are they doing that? Why are they fighting about the bills?'"

Well, maybe they signed up for too many bills. And they don't understand Who's paying them. We don't place our trust in money. We place our trust in God. When things are not going well financially, trusting Him is all-consuming, but it's not impossible. Eleven years ago my husband lost his job and our family had barely any income for almost a year. God brought us through it. Rather than letting that crisis destroy my marriage, it brought me to my knees and helped shape me into a Godly woman who can write stuff.

No wonder the Biblical saying "In God We trust" is printed on American money. Yes you need this money. But O ye people, don't trust in this money, the cash whispers to us. The saying is printed on money, rather than on the side of the city bus or on the entrance to the library, because the danger is that we will all begin to trust in money. Don't do it. Trust in God. When we trust God to the extent that we decide we are just not going to fuss with our husbands over money, then we as wives have become masters at contentment and faith. Now it's all good wit da cash yo?

We see eye to eye. We don't even have ta try. 

We hang it out ta dry and we wave the thang good-bye.

The brilliant self help books and relationship experts with fancy titles would have us all believe that we need to work out every little thing in marriage.

I can't find that in the Bible. It's not in there.

It's a bunch of complicated psychobabble to drone on and on and dissect each issue, conflict and facial expression in marriage. Meanwhile life's just passing us right by. As Charlotte Lucas says in Pride & Prejudice, we must accept that, in marriage, "there will always be vexation and grief," and she's right. The author who wrote those words mocks her own character for saying this. But now it's my turn to write and I say there was great wisdom in it.

I say, just forgive already.

We don't have enough time here on Earth to waste our days fleshing out every little thing. I used to think it was somehow dishonest to forgive right away in marriage. That if I didn't feeeeeeel happy then I couldn't forgive. Yeah well, it's not dishonest at all, it's just smart. We probably apply the forgiveness passages in scripture very easily and cheerfully to people who really could not care less about us. Random people. I don't know who these people are, but I've forgiven them. They put the wrong thing in my grocery bag at the store. They gossiped about me. They didn't keep their word. They beat me in a game of Mario Kart wii.

The most important person in a wife's life is her husband. If any energy from our hearts is going toward forgiveness in this life, it ought to first go to that guy. He's the guy. He's worthy of our forgiveness.

A very cool lady told me long ago that the secret to forgiveness is simply to choose to forgive as a matter of the will. It's a decision that you make. And then ask God to let your feelings catch up with that. Our feelings are not in control. God is in control. When we Christian ladies go around proclaiming, "God is in control," we can really live it when we apply forgiveness like this in our marriage.

My favorite passage on forgiveness is Ephesians 4:32 which says, "Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as Jesus Christ has forgiven you." I always shrink in my chair a little at that last part. Oh yeah. Think what I've been forgiven for. Let's not think of it actually. I'm so small and worthless, so sinful and ashamed. If God can forgive me for what a mess I am, I can forgive my husband for anything at all. We need to take this passage as an order and a command rather than a suggestion. God is telling us to be kind to our husbands, to be tenderhearted toward them, to forgive them.

If a husband doesn't make a big fuss over his wife on a special occasion, has a grumpy day or days, behaves in an offensive manly fashion, disappoints his wife or hurts her feelings, all of which is to say, displays the fact that he is only human, then all she needs to do is announce to the Lord that she forgives him. And then ask the Lord to get her feelings to catch up with that.

Where else does it matter more than in marriage, to apply the passage in Matthew 6:3, "don't let your right hand know what your left hand is doing"? Otherwise known as, "keep no record of wrongs." 1 Corinthians 13.

That is the Bible defining love.

When my husband comes home from work, he parks in the driveway right by a tall hill that is somewhat landscaped but was overgrown with weeds this summer. That unattractive cliff is the first thing he sees when he comes home.

I never notice this hill. I don't pay any attention to it. The weeds never bother me.

He'd mention those weeds a lot, squirt them with weed fighter substance when he had time, and mention the pesky weeds again soon after that.

I finally realized that this was something that was really aggravating my husband. And I realized this was something I could do for him, was to get rid of those weeds. I'm here all the time, whereas his time at home is limited with working. So when I would go running this  summer, I'd spend 15 or 20 minutes pulling weeds afterward. I was sweaty and gross already from running, and the children were not awake yet to "help." I'm talking about the little helpers there. We give the older children lots of jobs, but even for them, this hill is steep, tricky and slippery with pine straw and probably chiggers whatever those are, so it was best left to the big people. Rather treacherous.

These weeds had some fight in them. They were more like medium sized bushes with stubborn personalities and roots to match. But I'm stubborn too, and I fought them for a little while each morning this summer. It took about a month to really get those weeds licked. They rallied and grew back in a couple of times, but they surrendered eventually after they realized they had met their match.

The hill looks very nice now.

I think my husband is happier when he parks in the driveway.

I stopped watching HGTV. I cut myself right off ladies. Haven't watched it in over a year now probably. It's that decorating channel with all these grandiose fun situations of extreme house makeovers and beautiful renovations. I liked the channel because it never brought me down or scandalized me the way so much of the smarmy content out there on TV does. I thought I'd found a nice fun wholesome little chick distraction when I just wanted to relax.

But guess what happened? No longer did I appreciate my beautiful house. No longer did I look around and see how lovely everything is and how blessed I am. Instead, I started walking around thinking, "Now if we just knocked out this wall.... and added a covered patio.... and if we expanded this room a little bit and added brighter fabric..." All of that looks so easy on HGTV. It's so easy, right? You just add a wall and little worker people come in and it takes 30 minutes and it's so much nicer now.

My husband lets me stay home with our children while he slays the dragon and provides for our family. He works as a pilot for an airline and also flies for the National Guard part time. We joke that we are a two-income family: my husband has two incomes. So I really appreciate his working so hard while I stay home. We're not cheap, the children and me. He is very devoted to taking good care of us. I decided adding a bunch of grandiose decorating ideas to our life was really not being the kind of wife I want to be. It displayed a lack of contentment that I didn't like in myself.

Every now and then I'll replace a lamp shade for 20 bucks. I painted a room gray-ish blue to cover up my dark red phase I was over. Paint's pretty cheap but it can take a lot of time to give yourself projects like that. I got new curtains on sale to replace the 20 year old ones in our bedroom. We can replenish and update little things gradually. But no more grand scale ideas for me.

No more HGTV for me. You might be able to watch it for fun and not start day-dreaming about granite counter tops but I can't. And I try not to stare too long at the pretty rooms in my Southern Living magazines either. My house is just fine the way it is. It's really beautiful actually and I love it. I think my husband likes to know I feel that way about it.