My husband has come through for better or worse, in sickness and in health. Commitment is another wonderful grace of our marriage and many of yours. I’ve come to believe it is in the marriage relationship that commitment can reach its fullness.

When I was ten months pregnant, Tony would wake up at three in the morning and help me roll over. When I dropped the curling iron on my nose years ago, he promised the ointment he dabbed on my poor burn would help me look fine in no time. When I ran outside of the bookstore at the college where I taught for 28 years and planted my face in the street, Tony spent days applying Neosporin and baggies of ice to my entire mangled face.

And I’m there for Tony (this section, sad to say, is shorter), making a doctor’s appointment to check out those suspicious spots on his face, putting it on MY calendar, so that it is not forgotten.

We take care of each other in other ways as well. I had no idea when I walked down the aisle how good it would be to have someone to help sustain me emotionally. Sometimes I wonder if I could get where I’m going without him, certainly not as easily. And how could I give the three speeches this weekend, if he hadn’t read them, offering good suggestions, and then his final approval?

And what if one of you writes and says you hate me and my blog or, worse, that you gave my book one out of five stars? Well, of course, ultimately, it would be the Lord who would restore my soul, but his servant, my husband Tony, helps too.

When I am tired, impatient, or disheartened, or if I’ve suffered a blow to my self-esteem, though he is a man of few words, he quietly and patiently says the things that will help me.

And there’s one of the greatest emotional needs of all. We were together fifteen years ago as Tony’s mom, our dear Mrs. Stark, lay dying in the intensive-care unit for two weeks. The early morning that she made her passage, I sat by her bed, holding her hand and stroking her arm with the other two sisters-in-law, while the brothers stood nearby, Tony behind me, patting legs hardly discernable beneath the crisp white sheet. Our hearts broke together.

Now in this season of life, my parents are 92 and 84. Although they are still able to live at home and take care of themselves, they love us to come, and sometimes need us to come, and Tony is there, lovingly helping them any way he can. He and my sister’s husband help me and my sister do what we can to make life easier and nicer for them. Tony has fixed plumbing, put in higher toilets, trimmed bushes, put up a stretch of fallen privacy fence after a storm. He takes fish home-bass and crappie he has caught and filleted-and he cooks it for them. There’s nothing Dad enjoys more. He makes chocolate chip cookies, his specialty, for Mom because there’s nothing she enjoys more.

Well, I’m about to cry talking about fish and cookies. The care my husband shows my parents is a tender grace I will never get over.