On tulips, knives, and other heroic acts of love

Just three weeks ago, for the first time, he bought me flowers.

We’d been married for nearly 8 months, and some girls, I suppose, would feel sorry for me. Nearly two years together, and no flowers?? No chocolates!?? According to most standards, it broke all modern laws of chivalry.

A Knife for His Girl

The first gift he ever gave me was as perfect as possible: a knife. I was the kind of girl who carried a 4” Norwegian fixed blade on my hip every day of my life from the time I was eight years old. This habit earned me a few sideways looks from a certain museum security guard somewhere in northern Oregon and the nickname “knife chic” from all the boys in Drivers ed.. For some peculiar reason, I stopped wearing the knife when I started college.

Just hours before I flew home for Christmas break of my second year, he dropped me off at my apartment after our first group outing together (a hike, bonfire, and movie day he had planned) and handed me a bubble-wrapped object. Inside was a beautiful, French-made Opinel pocketknife. Right then, I realized, he cared about knowing me.

In the days that followed, we began a relationship, I bailed, then slowly realized he actually was the one—like everyone close to me had been patiently explaining for quite some time.

During those weeks and months, he cultivated our friendship, guarded my heart from undue emotion and pressure, wrote poetry on his blog and thoughtful emails to me, and left tea bags in my mailbox at school. He organized “group” hikes for a girl who missed the mountains and rugged outdoors of Washington state, and he wood-burned a keychain with my family motto. He may also have strolled by to give me graham crackers during a particularly heart-stopping exam day after I texted him to “please pray for me” (let’s just say I was crumbling in my resolve to not date him by that point).

There he was, in a million ordinary ways, telling me he loved me.

We married, and that same care and affection told me firmly to spend a few minutes reading at the end of a long day—he could manage the dishes. If I was tired but the floor needed swept, the broom was out of my hands. If I didn’t have time to make dinner because of an evening work project, he was excited to invent something delicious. Not that I began reclining on beds of ease, but he made it his business to care for me in as many un-heroic ways as he possibly could.

I’ll take that any day over store-bought flowers.

The Washing Machine – a lost opportunity?

When the inventors of the dishwasher first presented their novel idea, the project failed. The average housewife, they discovered, actually enjoyed the opportunity to wind down for the evening with her hands in a warm, sudsy sink, or to chat with friends in the warmth of the kitchen while cleaning up after a meal. It was only when the family structure significantly weakened in the wake of WWI that a machine which cut out needless labor suddenly became a marvelous prospect.

I am the last to hate on the dishwasher as the efficient solution to endless sinkfuls of dishes, but I would argue that along with the quiet, routine opportunity to wash dishes, we have generally lost the appreciation for commonplace service.

People earn medals for the Olympics and talk glowingly about missionaries who have given up everything to care for African orphans (both of which are worthy endeavors in different ways), but have we forgotten the true reward of doing menial tasks in the name of Christ? Have we looked so admiringly on the world’s ideas of discipline and sacrifice, or even the church’s ideals of piety that we forget all about the “poor in spirit”, “the meek”, “the peacemakers” and all their tribe?

Of the demon-possess man whom Jesus healed, Tim Challies wrote:

He wanted to follow Jesus. He wanted to be close to Jesus. He wanted to live a life of radical obedience. But Jesus told him to stay, not to go. Do not follow me.

Christian, God has appointed you to be his missionary right where you are. There is no one better suited to the task. “Go home to your friends, your family, your neighbors, your colleagues, and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you.”

What if it’s more selfless to help budget for the week than to move across the country? Or to take out the recycle and make a late-night run to the grocery store than to learn a new language? What if joyfully helping with a million-and-one unremarkable duties of life is a harder part of sanctification than striking out on a dangerous adventure for the cause of the gospel?

Being married to a man who practices this balance more faithfully than I has caused me to examine my own motivations for service and the limits I place on sacrificing for those around me.

My First Flowers

This year, on Valentine’s Day, I had of course I had locked myself out of the house in the cold winter air, so I was particularly eager for my husband’s momentary arrival home. When he became late, the figurative angel on my shoulder whispered that he might be stopping for a gift, so it might not do to be prematurely annoyed. I was glad I listened when he stepped out of the car with a bright bunch of tulips and a handful of red and white candles.

He’d picked me flowers out in the wild before, never bought them for me. Yet somehow it didn’t matter. He’d cared for my heart, listened to my irrelevant thoughts, held me when I cried, cheerfully volunteered for unpleasant tasks, and bought me ice cream when I didn’t need it. He superogated all the fairytale dictates for princes and cared about unimportant corners of his wife’s heart.

Then again, what girl doesn’t love flowers?

So here’s to men who take the time to truly know their women and love them enough to wash dinner plates and bury mice.