Week 49: Dips
Sometimes life dips. And sometimes you eat dips.
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.
First off, let me apologize for this post coming on Saturday. To this point, I had never missed a Friday post. Unfortunately, this week slipped away from me. Chalk it up to human error, I guess. But as you’ll see in the story for this week, sometimes we have to learn through human error. It doesn’t make the error itself any better, but the key is that we learn through it — learning through life’s dips.
It was Super Bowl Sunday. It’s a special day in our household. Not because of the game so much as the special memories we have of that day. In 2015, Sarah and I went to Super Bowl XLIX just days after we had gotten engaged.
But this Sunday, we woke up on the wrong side of the bed. We both felt sick, and we were supposed to make food for a party with friends that night. Then, our close friends had just had their first child that morning. We were going to try to go see them before the game.
We quickly found out, however, that none of that was going to be happening this day. We were sick. We were tired. We weren’t having the greatest morning.
In fact, we started taking it out on each other. The married couples out there might be able to relate. I was putting pressure on Sarah to get ready for the party. She wasn’t a big fan of that. For a while, there was some friction in our apartment.
Then, we paused.
Pausing seems to be a pretty good course of action in these situations. I love my wife, and she loves me. But that doesn’t mean we never fight. When we do, though, it seems that pausing and praying is a good remedy.
We found that instead of pressuring each other, we needed to care for each other. We needed to rest. So we did. We had gone through one of life’s dips. They come from time to time.
Then, later that night, we made some dip — taco dip.
We ended up watching the game with my dad, and we had a great time. It was obviously an unforgettable game with the Patriots making a huge comeback. As I thought about it later, it was the perfect metaphor. They went through a dip, but they got back up and won the game.
Though it was a great game, I won’t remember that most from this Super Bowl Sunday. No, I’ll remember the feeling of wrapping my arms around my wife after a tough morning and knowing that I’ll always have someone to help me through life’s dips. And sometimes we’ll even make dips in the process.
“ Each time he said, ‘My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.’ So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ can work through me.” — 2 Corinthians 12:9
