We tend to scrape up all the lonely, echoing, unknowable parts of ourselves and drop them in drawers or hang them from little wooden shelves, injecting our feelings into objects that won't judge or abandon us, holding on to the past in this tangible way. But everyone else? Everyone else has their priorities straight.~Sloane Crosley (From Grief Is For People)

Do you ever feel you'd like someone to grab your hand, pull up two chairs and say, "Sit down. Tell me everything. I have time?" 

My husband is good at doing this. And he may not believe me that I see him in this way. He may more experience that I'm exasperated with all the tools he has--that I insist he put them away in a too tiny closet we have in our condo. That I scold him for all the phone wires looping over the lamps. I do this. Yes. But I also so love that he listens to me. One time, when I was formally working, a client of mine said to me at the end of the session, "Did you know that when you smile, your top teeth are crooked?" I remembered I immediately put my hand over my mouth and tried to stop smiling and muttered something like, "Oh, right. true. They are crooked." And when the client left, I pulled a compact mirror out of my purse, smiled wide and closely examined my teeth and thought, "She's right. My teeth are a lot more crooked than I realized." My feelings were hurt and I couldn't shake the fact that I couldn't shake off a rude comment. I stuffed my feelings in a drawer and thought how immature I was. Other people wouldn't let that comment bother them. Everyone else has their priorities straight. 

When I got home from work, I decided to pull open the drawer, reach in and take out the ugly little comment, like a marble I'd been saving that was covered in mud. I told my husband how vulnerable I felt in front of the client, how I'd felt like I didn't want to smile anymore, and also how I felt so stupid for taking something that small so personally. My husband didn't interrupt. Didn't say I was too sensitive. He just held my hand for a long time then said, "You know, Priscilla, that tiny, little bit of crookedness is what makes you, you. Your smile is beautiful. I love your smile." It was as if he'd taken the mud-spattered marble from my palm and rinsed it off in the sink. And that marble shone blue again--lovely as a shaggy hydrangea stacked with blue florets the color of the sky.

The love and affection of God through my darling husband.