Photo by Amanda Arch Photography

Honour – regard with great respect.

Love – an intense feeling of deep affection.

Cherish – protect and care for (someone) lovingly.

Early one Saturday morning, my husband rolled over and quietly whispered,

“Bren, LC is awake.”

Although, I already knew that she was awake – because she had been awake for a half hour, as had I. Honestly, I just really, really did not want to get out of bed. There, in my exhausted, foggy state of mind, I snapped.

“Why don’t you get up with her then?”

I snared back at him, just wanting the world to disappear under my covers, with me in them. I took a deep breath – knowing full well that even if he did get up with her, I’d need to get up to feed her anyway. I crawled out of bed, only half aware of what just happened.

As I tip-toed into LC’s room, a calmness came over me, with her sweet blue eyes staring at me through the crib bars, and a smile so big that I could see it behind her soother.

“Hello sweet one.”

I whispered as I reached down to pick her up. I settled in the rocking chair and my thoughts starting coming through the fog.

“Oh no,” I thought as I heard my husband moving around in the bedroom.

I snapped at him, I used a mean and gnarly tone, this was OUR Saturday morning – the one that we’d been looking forward to all week. This was our morning to take things slow and relaxed, to enjoy each other’s company – and I ruined it before we’d even gotten out of bed. Regret sat like a bowling ball in the pit of my stomach. He told me about LC so sweetly, so lovingly. And I didn’t even SEE him this morning, I just saw yet another thing that only I could take care of.

He popped his head into the nursery, I looked up at him with tears in my eyes, ashamed of how I reacted.

“Please to go back to bed, I didn’t actually mean what I said when I woke up, I want you to have a relaxing quiet morning, just like we’d planned.”

He responded, “You can’t expect me to stay in bed after you say something like that. Obviously I feel terrible that I can’t be the one getting up with her every morning, and I appreciate the fact that you do.”

Then he did the most amazing thing…

He walked downstairs and made ME coffee. He asked me what I wanted for breakfast, he asked me what I wanted to do that day. He pulled me into his arms and told me that he sees that I am overwhelmed and wants to know what he can do to help. He loved on me. In my darkest, meanest and most snarly of moments – he honoured and cherished me in a way that I’ve never felt before. He reached into my tired, lonely and exhuasted heart and loved me with a Christ-like love (Ephesians 5:25) – even though I am flawed, broken and undeserving.

I thought that we were going to have a terrible Saturday but because my husband chose to see through the cracks of my tone and understand where I was hurting, we had the best Saturday ever. We had coffee and breakfast, we took our daughter to the park, we aimlessly wandered through Wal-Mart, we read the Bible together and then he made ME dinner. What could have been a day where we tore each other to shreds using passive aggressive jabs and comments, as we have done on days before this, he chose differently – he chose to love on me instead.

And what a beautiful day it was.