This year has been a year of paring down for me. In the spring I challenged myself with a project called 333. I hid or gave away all but 33 items of clothing for 30 days. I can’t explain the freedom I felt with fewer choices for daily attire. And packing? I could fit my whole closet in the suitcase and still stay beneath the weight limit.
Then, God began to strip away other things. I felt compelled to quit my part-time job. I stopped volunteering at three different places. I decided not to join the church choir and not to participate in a third Bible study. I felt led not to start piano lessons or Spanish classes. I let my personal training clients go. I dropped my daily workouts from 90 minutes to 30 minutes.
Terror gripped my heart. I’m used to being busy. For many years, I’ve stayed busy because I felt my husband was too busy for me. He’s an officer in the Army and remains on duty 24/7. He’s usually the last one to leave the office and never hesitates when he’s summoned on a weekend.
Of our ten married years, he’s spent a third of them in another country and he’s not shy about his itch to deploy again. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad he loves his job, but it doesn’t leave much of him left over for me.
It seemed that when a week’s worth of 4a.m. mornings caught up with him, he preferred to spend the weekend with the remote control than with me.
To be lonely with someone, is doubly painful than solitude. So I filled up my schedule. Even as I eliminated commitments, I ensured that I would be available to people. I planned to quit spending so much time doing and more time being with those I loved. I wanted to be more like Jesus and invest deeply in lives.
Recently, I found myself at home with my husband on a Saturday afternoon. Without commitments, I was terrified that I would be left to twiddle my thumbs in silence. Lonely. So, I wrote down a new to-do list. Things I needed to write, things I wanted to create, dishes I want to make, people I wanted to call.
Then he said, “Do you want to get a bottle of wine and put up our Christmas tree tonight?
Babe! I have things I wanted to get done!”
He didn’t say anything else. But my Father did. Abby, will you make yourself available to others and intentionally bless the lives of others, and yet be too busy for your husband?
And then I began to wonder. Had my husband poured himself more and more into his job as a reaction to my preoccupation? Had we begun a vicious circle of each refusing to be the one waiting patiently for the other?
I picked out our favorite chardonnay. I carried three boxes of Christmas ornaments up from the basement, and we began to fluff the branches of our plastic fir tree. We strung the lights and hung the stockings and sipped slowly.
Nothing got written. We had takeout for dinner. I never called my friends. But I’m thankful God spoke to my heart at the crest of the Christmas season. I want to be intentionally with my husband. And I want to be the one willing to wait patiently for him. I want him to know that he is my most important gift.
