Thankfulness

So I’m in the Atlanta airport, as it seems I often am on Saturday nights. I’m at gate B6 waiting for the late  flight I’m taking back to Huntsville after speaking this weekend in Farmersville Texas (audio here: www.farmersvilletxchurchofchrist.org/). So I got off the earlier flight, glanced at the overhead monitor, and took the nearest escalator to the train, heading to terminal B. Since they had tagged and taken my carry-on, I was texting Glenn, on this very crowded escalator, with someone very close to my back on the very next step, to tell him I would be a bit late getting out at Huntsville, He texted back: “Turn around.” So I did. And there he was!

“What on earth are you doing here?!”

“Just came to Atlanta to see you.”

What fun to find that he’d taken a voucher in Charleston that coincidentally put him on MY flight back home from Atlanta.  I’m good with this!

So that’s a couple of the things I’ve been thinking about lately that I love about my husband. He loves to be with me and he’s good at surprises. For today’s post here are twenty more of my top favorite things about Glenn Colley:

1. My husband is able to tune out stress better than any man I know. He deals with a lot of it. But when he’s purposefully relaxing,he is very good at putting the lock on the stress box. I need to find the key to that lock myself.
2. My husband is very good at showing interest in my “projects”, for lack of a better word. He encourages me to invest in and work on the things that bring me pleasure…and then he brags on the finished projects, even if the smocking is a little crooked or the paint is a little smeared or the wall hanging is not quite level. I can’t tell you how much I love this about him. Something about, “I really want you to go to that class,’ or “Go to Hobby Lobby and get the supplies to make that if you want.” is extremely therapeutic for me.
3. My husband tells me that I am the best women’s speaker he knows. Now, why would he say that, when, of course, he has never attended the first lecture I have ever made? Still, I like it.
4. My husband never, ever lets me carry heavy things if he’s around. He never sits on the couch and watches me bring in the groceries. Never. He fills up my car with gas, mows, takes out the trash and packages and mails all our books from The Colley House. He is our lifter and mover. He takes care of all the “man jobs”. I am not a feminist. I like that about him.
5. My husband asks me “How was your day?”…every single day. And then he follows up with questions about the details that I share. He is believable. He makes me think he really cares about those details. If miles are separating us, he still does this by phone. Every single day.
6. My husband plays “dumb” about cooking and laundry. Now, I know most of you would not like that, but I do. He acts as if culinary knowledge and the work of a laundress are highly technical fields and then he brags when he opens his t-shirt drawer. He says “I love my magic drawer that just refills over and over all by itself.”
7. My husband is good with children. He always changed lots of diapers, never minded the spit-up, drank after them, bathed them, and disciplined them. Best of all, he listened—really listened— to them, even if their questions and conversation came while he was writing sermons or doing house repairs.
8. My husband refrains from using electronics—you know, web surfing, face booking, and texting—when we are able to spend time together. He tries to be absorbed in our conversation and I like that—a lot!
9. My husband is extraordinarily concerned with the downtrodden, the handicapped and the lonely. He has no more inclination to spend his time with or give his attention to the wealthy, the entertaining, or the interesting people in his world than he does those who find it difficult to carry on conversations or those who require lots of extra time and patience. In fact, it often seems to be the other way around. I sometimes think this has to do with the fact that he wore a huge back brace all through high school because of his scoliosis. If this is why he is so kind to the friendless, I am glad he wore it. Clerks at store, waiters, mechanics, and especially the ladies at the post office love him. I get lessons when I go in there about what a great husband I have. (He shows them photos of Ezra, too.) I can learn a lot from him about agape and about just being friendly.
10. My husband is extremely good to my aged father. I could write a book about barn doors and mowing and buying lunches and building rooms and finding cars and contacting lawyers and equipping Dad’s TV for football games and taking him to gospel meetings. But, suffice it to say, he’s very good to Dad. When I watch him with Dad, I smile and speak silent prayers of thanksgiving. He is faithful to call his own parents every Saturday night. He loves them dearly. Their influence and  importance in his world are unmistakably huge….But to care for  the father-in-law, too? That’s not always in the comfort zone.
11. Money is far less important than are people to my husband.  I have witnessed him make some pretty big financial sacrifices for the well-being of other people in his world. Sometimes the other people are unaware that he has even made the payment or purchased the medical supply. I love that he uses things and loves people instead of the other way around.
12. My husband is impeccably ethical in his dealings with others. He’d rather leave the questionable activity off than even take a chance at making a decision he might regret upon reflection. He’s also very logical in figuring out his personal scruples and there are Biblical principles of which he is aware and about which he is diligent in daily application. I’m glad, but I am almost equally glad that he took the time, as the kids were growing up, to bring these ethical dilemmas home to our family Bible times and present the scenarios to them, in words they could understand, and then walk them through the thought process, finally bringing them to the right decision. I think this was Ethics 101 for both of our kids and I think it was far more valuable than any college ethics or values class either of them ever subsequently had (and one of them has a PhD in Philosophy).
13. I love that my husband is never vulgar. He never crosses lines of impropriety and he never embarrasses me with crude humor.
14. My husband is complimentary of me, at every opportunity, as he speaks and writes and even in simple conversation. He calls me “Mrs. Colley” and I know something that I don’t mind the world hearing is about to come out of his mouth.
15. He is sentimental…about things we were given by old family members, about his grandfather’s Bible, about sweet memories and photos of our children and about tokens of our early days together. He keeps things in drawers and in a safe and he keeps notes and cards in his desk at work. He loves the fuzzy picture of our son swinging in his lap more than the expensive and very clear professional shots from their childhood. And he will never, ever part with that baseball Caleb inscribed at age eight with the title “MVD…Most Valuable Dad”.
16. He is NOT an athlete, but still he was the coach for both kids’ teams when they played in the Park and Rec league. They did not always have winning seasons with him as coach, but his coaching has produced some substantial life wins.
17. My husband lets me have free rein in our house. I love that! He could be in all the decorating, menu, homeschool details as our home’s leader, but he isn’t. And he always acts like he likes my choices. That’s the best.
18. He actually WANTS me to read to him—when we travel, when we go out in the Miata, and sometimes just when we go to bed at night. And he wants ME to choose the books. How rare is that in the husband community?
19. In spite of all the sentiment, my husband is a man. He likes guns, carpentry, knives, cars and  even football (I had to bring him along to fanaticism about the Tide, but he’s there now.) He is the unquestioned leader of the Colley house and he is not a man you would ever even try to manipulate. It would never work.  Sometimes I almost think I do NOT like that, but then I reconsider and I do like it.
20. Believe it or not, there is a shorter, far less consequential list of things I don’t like as much about my husband. Sometimes he goofs on grammar. Sometimes he drives while he is sleepy. He often—really often—forgets things. (If you have told him a sin struggle you are having or something embarrassing about your life or family, he likely prayed and prayed for you and then he forgot all about it. That’s often a very good thing. But he also forgets to mail things, to stop at the cleaners, to pick up things at the store, to call people back, and what happened in the previous episode of the BBC series we are watching.) He leaves his socks on the floor and his closet is a train wreck. He forgets to brush off the dust and grass before coming in from mowing and he opens a new bag of chips before using up the old one. Sometimes he forgets to cover up the spaghetti he is reheating in the microwave. I like this list about my husband, too, because it IS lots shorter and far less consequential AND because it makes me feel a little bit better about the things I constantly forget, the messes I make and the mercy that I need.