The Accidental Romantic

 A very distinctive heart-shaped area escaped the swirling snow on our driveway last night.  

I supposed I should have actually gone out there to get a better angle.  As it is, this could also look like a whale with its mouth open.  But to gain the better photographic proof of my story I would have had to go out in my pjs.  I was not so inclined.  So this, taken from the front facing kitchen window, is all I can really offer.

I'm not sure why this patch remained dark and wet like this.  Ken had left for a meeting about an hour previous, and at that point the entire van-shaped patch you can still see in this picture had no snow.  Might be just the way it was swirling.  Might be how some of the driveway is still recovering from construction.  Who knows? 

For fun I took the picture and showed it to him on his return, pretending to be all flattered and impressed that he'd made arrangements for it to do this.  He didn't skip a beat and happily took all the credit.  He even puffed out his chest a little.  Not kidding.

He didn't have to.  He's already demonstrated sacrificial patience and a willingness to put his shoulder to the task in all that has needed to be done these past weeks to get us moved in and set up.  With the unusual time line of our move, combined with the unique feature that we were providing our own kitchen, he made that the first priority, paying careful attention to my detailed and rather picky specifications.  (See "Jubilant Kitchens" previous post.)  Next he made sure my own work space was ready, helping to provide me the ordered calm I so badly need to be able to think straight, the lacking of which these past weeks has been wearing on us both.  He did these things first before getting at the areas that mattered more to him, like sorting out the crawl space downstairs, and re-establishing his own desk and files.  Knowing that I have felt the stress of a disrupted environment more keenly than he has, he made sure I was okay first.

This was not in the absence of any other non-moving-related stressors.  When you deal with finances like Ken does, and when your job is basically answering the phone to assist someone who's in varying degrees of freaking out because whatever they were doing with their computer isn't working, you can get interrupted and thrown into an 'immediate' circumstance at any given notice.  

Since Saturday, then, we've been able to redirect our energies to getting him all copacetic.  It won't be as, let's just say, visually ordered as I like my spaces to be, but it still needs to be functional for him.  The next little nuances of hanging hooks and pictures that I still have on my list can wait.  It's Ken's turn.

Of course, there's nothing accidentally romantic about making marriage work.  At no stage of our life together have things come 'easy or automatic.'  Staying in love is a very intentional endeavour, and does not involve any magic whatsoever, heart-shaped snow pictures notwithstanding.  I'd be less than authentic if I conveyed that these past months of housing transition, huge decisions, delayed gratification, uncertainty, and sheer physical labour did not press us to the edges of our commitment to a God-honouring covenant.  They did.  Both of us have had moments when we weren't exactly the best versions of ourselves.  

But we've also been cognizant of the fact that we continue to build a home, not just a house.  And where we lay our heads at night, as basic a human requirement as that is, isn't as important as where we lay our hearts - in the hands of God who holds us unbreakably together. 

So here's to whatever adventures this new house will hold for us.  Here's to letting nothing be accidental when it comes to our love.  Here's to taking serendipitous joy in the whimsy.  Here's to us, now.  

On to Tuesday...and the simple luxury of an ordered desk, for which I am profoundly grateful.