Week 40: Support
A great joy of marriage is simply being there for one another.
Each Sunday, my wife and I prepare, cook and eat a meal together — intentionally. Every Friday, I’ll be sharing our experience here in this space. I want to see the growth that will come in our marriage because of this. I hope you enjoy our story. You can find last week’s post here.
The holidays are always a busy time. We already told you about all the traveling we did around Thanksgiving that might possibly have gotten us sick. But what I love about the holidays is that, hopefully, that busyness all has a purpose. Family time. Being generous. Remembering the birth of Christ. It’s not busyness just to be busy like we sometimes display during the previous 11 months of the year.
Well, Sarah and I found ourselves particularly busy once again this weekend. We were still shaking off sickness a whole week after getting back from Thanksgiving family time. But what threw things into even more of a frenzy was the fact that Sarah’s final graduate class of the semester was the following Tuesday. She had homework to finish, including a paper that was due by the end of the day on Sunday.
We quickly realized there wasn’t going to be time in the day to do a full Cooking With Sarah meal.
Now, a few things right off the bat — Cooking With Sarah has become a priority in our marriage and you make time for priorities. But sometimes priorities change. This week, the priority was finishing Sarah’s paper. As her husband, my main focus was supporting her.
So she got to work. With all her books laid out on the table, she typed away at the keyboard. She’d bounce ideas off me then type away some more. She worked so hard. I was so proud of her. Finally, a few hours before the deadline, she had a finished paper. We read through it a few more times and made some edits. Then, she hit send.
“Want some peanut butter oatmeal?” she said.
Things don’t always go exactly as planned. Ideally, we’d like to do a big fancy recipe every week. We’d like to have hours alotted for cooking and eating together every Sunday. Most weeks, that’s what happens. But not every week. And that’s okay.
Life moves. It ebbs and flows. And that’s okay.
But some traditions are worth the work. They aren’t easily bypassed. There’s a reason for that — they mean something. But the way we keep those traditions may change from time to time.
I obliged, and at about 10 pm on a Sunday night, we made peanut butter oatmeal on the stove. Was it a big fancy feast? Maybe not. But what Cooking With Sarah has always been about is shared experience. This week we shared stress, work and celebration. All in all, that’s a recipe for a pretty good night.
We sat on the couch together eating our oatmeal. My mom always told me it was a superfood. Sarah’s my superhero, so I guess it fits.
Oh, and she got an A on the paper.
