I sat on the living room couch, and my husband just home from work sat on the floor with our six year old daughter. Their backs were to me, but I listened in to their conversation. At each question and answer I became more and more aware of how things had changed in the relationship between my husband and I. His attention, fully focused on our daughter, with me in the background, and the scene was far removed from the one set twenty years ago when I first fell in love with him.
Back then it was the guitar. There’s just something about a man playing a guitar. Maybe it’s not like that for you, but for me I went weak in the knees at a man who could handle a strat confidently. Even to this day I’d say my favorite sound is the particular one of fingers sliding across frets. When my husband, even before he was my husband, used to serenade me while he strummed his guitar I went all goo-goo eyes for sure. He could play so well. I loved that about him. Now he hardly ever plays.
I remember when I first saw him strumming his electric acoustic on stage I felt an attraction. He was tall, thin, and had this long, dark hair. The lights glistened off his luxurious locks, and his strong features were complimented by the stray hair that fell across his eyes while he bent down over his instrument to perform. I was smitten from the moment I first laid eyes on him, and many dates consisted of me just playing with that hair. I loved it. Now it’s gone an almost dull salt and pepper color. Definitely more salt than pepper, I would say.
When we were younger we would run to watch movies at the theater all day, or take a long road trip without any definite plan of where we’d end up. He was spontaneous, fun, and like most others, I was drawn to him. He had a playful spirit, a peculiar light that emanated from within, and knew how to make you have the best of times doing absolutely nothing. We could drive around for hours listening to the radio and never bore of the mundane. I loved that about him. I can’t imagine us running off for a quiet car ride nowadays.
I sat on the couch and I listened to my husband (the man I had fallen in love with twenty years ago) speak softly to my firstborn. “Do you understand what it means to say you want Jesus to come into your heart?”