Date Night

Marriage is a funny thing. I have always been an optimist, not just your average run-of-the-mill optimist, but a polar optimist. As in, if pessimism is the south pole I'm on the flag pole of the north pole right at the top. You would think life and it's hard-knock blessings would force me to be cynical and thus lower my expectations, but I'm a die-hard. Don't get me wrong, I can be very cynical, but if you could look past the superficial feelings, you'd find the shining light of optimism brewing underneath.

This made our first year of marriage sort of a battle zone; Dale with his *hard dose of reality* hat and me fighting tooth and nail to hang on to my own belief that our marriage could be what I thought our marriage should look like was an explosive combination. Mad-dog tenacity doesn't give up easily, either. I've had to let go of a lot of my expectations over the years, but learning that lesson was one of the saving graces of my life. With that said, I still have not fully accepted it.

So last night, when Dale picked me up for our date, I was a little let down that he didn't comment on the way that I walked down the sidewalk to the car, or my new lipstick, or the dress that I fussed over for fifteen minutes before he arrived. I was moderately disappointed that when I asked him what he was thinking about, he said, "The car," and not "How amazing you are." But when I called the kids to make sure they found the brownies that I had stashed away and forgotten about, he took over the crisis on the other end of the phone while I ran in to get us a table at the restaurant. Before the waitress came we were looking over the menu and he asked if I wanted to split. A few times during our dinner, he started conversation out of the silence because we really enjoy talking to each other. Then when we were finished with dinner rather than toodle around town just to stay out, he said, "Let's go home and play cards." It's what we do every night.

What is striking to me about all of these things that mean so much to me about my husband is that my expectations are desperately shallow and vain in comparison to the riches of true companionship. I couldn't have dreamed up a better match for myself, I'm so glad God did!!!