Pursuing the One Who Drives Me Crazy

I’m learning the art of pursuing my husband and continually winning over the man I’ve been married to for nearly fifteen years. I am falling in love with him again every day. I love him for the new person he is becoming as we grow old together. I say I am learning because it is still a work in progress. It’s much easier for me to get frustrated that his trash is sitting right next to the trash can, and the toilet paper roll is sitting on the window sill above the empty holder. Twenty million pairs of dirty socks leave a trail through the house like breadcrumbs. In my book, those are all legit reasons to be frustrated. All legit reasons to send pictures of these offenses to him while he’s at work and asks me, “What are you doing?” I’m picking up your crap, that’s what, my dear sweet Hunny Bumpkins. 

But, still, in the middle of it all, I know these things are what make us a couple. These are the things you only learn about someone after 15 years of living together. Yet, it’s so much more than that. It’s choosing gratitude so that I can love him in all his weirdness and shortcomings and things he does that drive me crazy.

Those are the things that make him who he is and what I fell in love with. Me knowing about them are the things that make him mine and are the things that are ours to keep and to hold. These things make us who we are, together. I am so very grateful that I get to call him mine. And I want him to know that. To understand how much I appreciate how hard he works for us, and how he would do anything to make his girls happy, and how his favorite place to be is at home. I love to listen to his laugh that sounds like his granddad’s, his corny dad jokes, and when he’s stumbling over his words trying to compliment me because the way I look still takes his breath away. He may not always get the words out, but I can see it in his eyes. I see it in the way he looks at me, and I want him to know who he is, is enough.

I feel society is big on playing up how our husbands drive us crazy and how they are clueless to all the things and how they lack in all these ways, but we tolerate them because they kill the spiders. And it’s hilarious, and so much of it can be true, and worthy of screenshotting and sending to our significant others. But we can’t forget that our big, tough guys DO have feelings down in there and need a little TLC now and then, too. I’m not talking about the colds that knock them out for two weeks, where we have to pray for patience. I’m talking about lifting them up in a completely different way. Pursuing them like we did when we first laid eyes on them back in college and thought they still looked cool even with that crazy attempt of a mustache and muscle tank. Sending them “thank you” texts instead of “you should have” texts. It’s cooking their favorite meal after a long day (or picking up from their favorite restaurant). Bringing cookies up to work and bringing way better coffee up to work. Or just show them you are happy to see them when they walk in the door. Pausing everything to stare into those baby blues and greet him with a, “I’m so glad that you are home.” And, not because I’m so ready to run out the door and leave these kids with you but because we aren’t entirely who we are, without you here with us. 

I’m not saying these things are easy. I’m saying it takes me a great effort to be able to do these things that I have to keep this mindset at the forefront, over and over again. I have even posted notes throughout my house to remind me of all the ways I’m thankful for him, what he does for me, and what he does for our girls. Even if sometimes I think he does it all wrong. Even if he riles up the kids AND the dogs before bedtime, and I can never find the same bowl he puts in different places, every single time he unloads the dishwasher. He tries. He has his way about things. But it’s all full of love and effort and playfulness that we all thrive on. And I think it’s important for him to know that. I think it’s important for him to know he brings the fun. For him to know how much we love having him around. How much he holds our family together. 

So I pursue him, bring him flowers and beef jerky, send him ridiculous married selfies, pick up his stinky socks, and tell him how he carries my heart in the middle of all this chaos. In the middle of the good days and bad and every bit of crazy, in the middle of being so tired and just sitting on the couch next to each other after the girls go to bed because there is no one else I would rather have sitting next to me than him, even with me spying those dirty socks of his over in the corner.