Pick Up Lines

Just a few moments here, before I head out to the airport.  Another pick up.  Another home coming.  Sure wish I had kept track of how many of these we've had over the years.  How many times I have watched him walk toward me.  Towing his bag and all that work.  Pulling hard.  For me, for this house full of progeny. (love that word.)  I wonder what is going through his mind.  What will he find?  This time?

A breaking right down to tears and holding on to all the life in him?  Clinging to sanity and strength and all that his shoulders have meant to me these years?

Intense conversations about the kids...getting things worked out and finding new ways to communicate to them?  This great love.  Our standards.  Our rules.  Even as they try to find their feet and their wings.  God help us!  His shoulders broadening and carrying.  Reassuring me and comforting all this failure of mine.  Good man.  God man.

Sometimes a silent hurt between us.  Raging at the unfairness of how hard he works, and how alone I feel sometimes.  How alone he feels sometimes.

And on the best occasions....a dress and a stop before getting home.

Coming home tonight to a wife that has been sick all week.  The house torn apart and laundry piling in the mud room.  Kids who have missed him and want all that he has left.  A vacation plan that no longer looks like HIS, and having to work over the weekend so we are free to go, again, to the water with our soldier son.

Let me just be grateful.  Even if it's not perfect all the time.  Even if it hurts.  Often.  Even if it's not what we would pick.  Let me be thankful.  For this amazing man, and the strength of who he is because of WHOSE he is.  Thankful that he continues to lead us out, and that I continue to learn what it means.  To submit.  To God.  To His plan.  To this husband who climbs high and hard.  To the one I meet so often there, and who stands on the street while I stand on the curb.  Lips at matching height.    His hand always on my hip.

At the airport,

Bernadette