April 18, 2009

Have I told you about my wonderful husband? He really is an amazing man. He has so much patience and is so diligent, it amazes me.

He is a doctor of family medicine so he has to re-take his boards every so many years (7? - can't remember?). He has been painstakingly studying for his boards for the past almost-two years. He will re-take his boards in July and he started studying for them two years in advance.

He divided up the amount of material he had to study in such a way as to be able to make two passes through it all. With the first pass, he summarized and took notes and now he is studying his notes for the second pass. He has been waking up early almost every morning, for close to two years now, to do a little each day.

When it comes to his profession, he is a detail person. He is very thorough and he always goes the extra mile, even if it means he has to give up personal time to do it. He is constantly reading and studying and learning new information that comes out in the various medical journals during is personal time. It is not just a profession for him. It is an integral part of who he is. He is definitely the kind of doctor you would want to go to.

He is very diligent about working out. He works out every other day. He very seldom misses a workout. If he misses a day or two because we are on vacation or he is sick or something, he quickly gets right back to it as soon as he can. (Actually, he normally works out even when he is sick.) He keeps track of his weight and has a range within which he stays. If he sees he has moved to the upper level of his range, he cuts back until he is back where he wants to be. He definitely has a lot of self control and discipline.

He is also very diligent about keeping up with repairs around the house and with our two vehicles. He is always fixing something around the house. Right now it is the crown molding, which is in need of some re-caulking and painting. The people who lived here before we moved in had the house built and then lived here for 6 years or so without doing any maintenance work, or so it seemed when we moved in. So my husband has spent lots of time and effort over the years we have been here repairing, caulking, painting, etc. You name it, he has probably fix it. Last night, after he put the boys to bed and before he came to bed, he cleaned all of the crown molding in the foyer. This morning, he was up before anyone else and he re-caulked it all.

He is also wonderful about spending lots of time with our two sons and he is so patient with them. He spends hours reading and playing with them. Most Saturday mornings find the dad and his sons out running errands together. Today they went to a huge garage sale near our house that started at 8:00am. After that, they went to the tire place to have new tires put on our van. If they get finished with the tires in time, they will go to our church where they are having a special fun event for preschoolers today.

He takes care of all the finances, including researching and managing all of our investments. He keeps track of car repairs and mows and trims the lawn. When we have to make a large purchase, whether it is four new tires for one of our vehicles, a new camera or whatever, he researches it thoroughly to ensure we get the best deal for our money. He is a very busy man but he never complains and he never nags.

He is almost always in a good mood and is a very upbeat person in general. He loves to read, as do I, although most of his reading is about medical or financial information or a Bible study, unless we are on vacation when he might read a novel. He hardly ever watches television. He would rather be doing something, fixing something or reading something. He likes to spend his time doing something productive. Neither of us listen to much music, unless we are in the car and then it is usually the kids' music. I have a CD of classical music that I like to listen to in the kitchen and the husband and sons like it too so we listen to it when we are eating. Other than that, we don't listen to music.

Before I was married, I prayed often for the man I would marry. I am so thankful that God did not just give me what I prayed for:). I would never have thought to pray for so many of the wonderful character traits that my husband has and that God knew I would need in a husband. He is such a thoughtful, caring and giving person. He is so easy going and I don't think I have ever known him to hold a grudge. He is very slow to anger and, when he does get angry about something (which is very very seldom), his anger is always a calm, controlled kind of anger. He may raise his voice a little, more with inflection than volume, but he does not yell. I think he is probably the easiest person to get along with that I have ever met.

Our disagreements usually end up being more like discussions than arguments. Thankfully, we don't have them often. We went to many weeks of premarital counseling before we were married and I know that helped to prepare us a lot. We had to discuss so many things and we also had to create a budget together. I highly recommend this type of premarital counseling to anyone who is considering marriage. It really helps you to discuss so many important topics BEFORE you get married.

I think one of the reasons we have so few disagreements is that we have so many of the same beliefs and values. We have the same religious and political beliefs. Before we were married, we had already discussed and knew that we both wanted children, even though we were marrying late in life. We knew that we were both open to adoption and we knew and had discussed that we both wanted to homeschool our children. We knew approximately what our budget would look like but, more importantly, we had agreed to a philosophy of how we would manage our money. This could easily have been a problem for us in our marriage, had we not already discussed it, because we came from families who handled money very differently. In the first two years of our marriage, we had many more discussions about how we were handling our money and some were tense and took some long walks together to work through them. But we worked through it together and came out stronger on the other side. Before marriage, we also had many discussions about children and we have similar beliefs about how to raise our children. I think having agreement on so many of the important things in life really helps to reduce the number of disagreements that might pop up in the future.

Don't get me wrong. We are not perfect. We do have disagreements from time to time. But we have a very strong foundation for our marriage. The most important thing, by far, is that God is at the center of our marriage. That is most important for a strong foundation for marriage. We also both agreed before marriage that, if at any time during our lives together, one of us felt that we need to go for counseling, the other would go. We had both seen the value of counseling in our lives at times when we were single so we felt it was reassuring to know that the other felt the same about this.

I love my husband so much and I thank God for him often. As I have said, my husband is an early riser and a hard worker, so he normally falls asleep at night very quickly. There have been many nights when, as I watch him sleep, I pray to God, thanking Him for the awesome blessing He has bestowed on me with the gift of my husband. Just thought I would share with you what a wonderful man he is.

Hope you are having a great Saturday.