Once I became grateful for baby aspirin and nightly snuggles (see the two previous blogs), I began to realize my marriage was full of tender graces, and I began to dwell on them.

You may have some of these things in common with Tony and me, but it’s as likely, you have your own set of graces, but all of them are to be cherished.

I’m especially thankful for four specific graces, which I’ll explore in the next four blogs.

This week I want to chat about the grace of companionship. When our daughters were girls and would come home from school, I’d call from somewhere in the house, “Girls, come share your life with me.“ It was a silly, fun way to ask them about their day.

My grown daughters are still delightful companions, but I have found that the dearest companion I have is the one who has shared my life for 43 years, my husband.

Probably nothing illustrates our companionship better than our home, the rooms we inhabit.

The living room is where we meet to drink our beverage of choice and discuss how the day was blessed or cursed. It is where he balances the checkbook and pay bills while I sit in the recliner with a lap board and try to do something with my pitiful nails. It is where he watches ballgames while I lie on the couch staring out the window at the canopy of trees on the bluff. It’s where I contemplate a new scene or article and he figures out a way to defeat the squirrels eating his tomatoes. It is where he’s been known to clip his toenails while I vacuum and say, “Why don’t you do that on the back porch!“

Our companionship always spread into the kitchen and has even more so since he’s retired. He makes an Italian pasta dish while I wash veggies so he can also make the salad. He prepare ears of corn for the microwave while I butter and burn the rolls.

Well, this entry is getting entirely too long. I’ll finish the kitchen and add, against my mother’s better judgment, the bathroom and bedroom next week (which means there will be five more blogs about marriage counting this one, not four). I don’t mind continuing this entry next week. It makes me happy to think about the rooms that Tony and I have lived and loved in.

My husband’s inability to say nice things was not his only deficiency. I personally do not care for an excessive display of public affection. But the simple touch, that I do enjoy.

“So, Tony,“ I believe I’ve said, “how about slipping an arm around my shoulder while the minister goes into his third and final point? How about a gentle nudge to show me Linda is waving at me across the auditorium? How about, best of all, just placing your hand in the small of my back after the service is over to usher me out of the building and to the parking lot instead of standing in the doorway calling, “Come on, Slick!“

I think of those things as “claiming me.“ All of these subtle touches would say to me, and to anyone watching, “My woman!“

I’m not saying he doesn’t try. He isn’t totally deaf to my wish list. When we discuss it every five or six years, he’s better for about three weeks. He touches my shoulder in the potluck dinner line and squeezed my knee when he sits down by me after the offering.

We haven’t had the talk for years now, but every six months or so, his memory will kick in. We’ll be sitting in church, when out of no where, he’ll throw his arm on the pew behind my shoulder. I’ll look at him and see incredible pride all over his face. But after about two minutes, he’ll start inching that arm back toward his body. He really wants it back. And I pat his leg, which means it’s fine, you can have your arm back.

The reason we don’t talk about it any more is because I finally realized the value of what I have. My husband touches me a lot. He holds me every night when we go to sleep and every morning as we wake up from the semiconscious state of sleep. He has done this for as long as I can remember; it is one of my most treasured gifts; it is what I’ll miss most if he leaves this life for the next before I do.

Two young women were recently on the Today Show talking about their book, I’d Trade My Husband for a Housekeeper. I doubt they were writing from a uniquely Christian perspective, but I liked what they had to say about things related to dissatisfaction: No one’s perfect and too often we judge our marriages by an unattainable ideal that doesn’t actually exist.

Sometimes when I talk about Tony, people get the idea that he is perfect or that I think he is, despite my assertion that no one is. Well, he is not the exception. But I no longer care about what he isn’t or what we don’t have. I’m just immensely grateful for what he is and what we do have.

In order to show you how I’ve come to such a lovely place in life, I’ll break my general rule, with his permission, and talk awhile about some of the things he doesn’t do well (or more precisely, didn’t do well—suddenly and remarkably, past tense). I’ll also explain how I finally came to see what he does do, has always done, tender graces I have foolishly overlooked in the past.

Let’s start with Tony’s inability to say complimentary things that women like to hear. Both of my daughters married men who, though they have very different personalities, are very good at telling them how beautiful or “hot” they are. They did not learn this from my husband.

Well, okay, I’m sure that wanting to hear nice things is an insignificant, terribly vain thing to care about, but I think a lot of women feel this way. I would really like Tony to think and then say he thinks I’m pretty. This has been little more than a fantasy for me, though. Oh, if Tony had only known what might have happened if he had even plagiarized Solomon’s Song of Songs.

You are beautiful, my darling . . . lovely as Jerusalem, majestic as troops with banners.

I really love the next two lines: Turn your eyes from me’ they overwhelm me.

Actually, I’m afraid if Tony chose two lines to quote, they would be the next two: Your hair is like a flock of goats descending from Gilead (6: 4-5).

Sometimes after I’ve worked hard to look especially nice for some event we’re attending together, I forget my vow NEVER to do it again and ask him, “So, do you think I look nice?“ At least he has the decency to say, “Of course,“ and to smile an appreciative little smile.

It isn’t even easy for my husband to say, “I love you,“ something we all love to hear, probably need to hear. In fact, my advice to people who grew up without hearing or saying words of affirmation, making it hard for them to, is “Get over it!“ Really, it’s important to the people you love to hear your love expressed.

But strangely, I don’t have the heart to say that to my husband. He grew up in a home full of love, but it was demonstrated in faithful giving to one another and seldom—maybe never—expressed.

So it is hard, I know that. And, honestly, his attempts to verbalize his love have seemed painful, though he’s getting really good at picking out cards. He stands there while I’m reading them. I look at him when I finish, and he nods; sometimes he says, “See!“

But I learned before he got so good at picking out cards that he says I love you, and much better than I do, without words.

For instance, when he worked at Empire District Electric Company, officers were sent to Mayo Clinic every other year for a rigorous physical. During one of these check-ups, a doctor told him to take a baby aspirin each day in order to reduce the risk of heart attack. Shortly after his return, I sat down at my vanity to put on my makeup, and there by the orange juice he had brought me was a tiny pink baby aspirin.

Long before the book, The Five Love Languages, was written, I looked in my mirror and asked myself, “Can you hear?“

If you’re reading this blog, chances are you’re aware that my first novel was released in February (2009). I wrote Audrey’s story, Tender Grace, to answer a question that has been nagging me—“How do we go on when someone so dear to us dies?“

I’ve been watching my parents, 92 and 84. They’ve been together 63 years, and when I’m home, it’s almost palpable—how will we bear being without each other? I feel like there’s a perpetual leave taking going on, one I participate in myself every time I leave them—hugging them and kissing them and saying how much I love them.

Yes, how do we go on? I don’t mean, how do we keep breathing; I mean how do we go on, embracing, appreciating and enjoying the life that’s left?

In addition to my parents’ situation, I have a friend who lost her husband in his late thirties, and two friends who have lost their husbands in their 50’s.

I’ll never forget something that happened when my high school friend visited me and a mutual friend a few months after her husband died. She came into the room where the two of us were sitting after we thought she had gone to bed, and she said, “You guys, what am I going to do?“ I have no idea what we said.

And there’s this: Tony and I are at the age that we know the time we have together is limited and that every day is a gift. Tender graces abound if we only care to see them. Every evening that I happened to work on Tender Grace, I would come out of my study so relieved to find my husband in his chair watching a ballgame, alive and well.

So I’m glad I was asked to speak at a retreat last spring, and that I was asked to do a workshop along with main sessions, especially since the workshop they asked for was called “Seeing the Tender Graces in Our Marriages.“

The title of this workshop is fairly descriptive, but you need to understand that I’m not discussing abusive marriages in all their many forms. And I’m not exploring perfect marriages or how to have one. Apart from the beautiful description of what true love looks like found I Corinthians 13, I have no idea.

Well, that’s not true. I have some idea, but my husband Tony and I do not have a perfect marriage. We couldn’t have—I’m in it!

What I am talking about is what most people would call ordinary marriages and seeing the tender graces in them. So often we have good marriages, marriages to be treasured, but at best we take them for granted, and at worst, we pick them apart unsatisfied because of what they aren’t instead of satisfied and grateful for what they are.

One nice thing about being as old as I am, I’ve quit making those two mistakes.

I’ll get into seeing tender graces in our marriages in a number of upcoming blogs. I’ll slap on all kinds of titles, but I’ll always include the (TGM) so you’ll know it’s another segment of “Seeing the Tender Graces in our Marriages.“ It’s nice that TGM could also stand for “Thank God for our Marriages.“

“My heart hurts.“ I’ve been using that phrase off and on since my daughter Stacey coined the phrase when she graduated from high school and realized several meaningful things would never come again.

My aging parents aren’t doing too well these days. My 84-year-old mother is home bound, not able to do much at all. My 92-year-old dad is her tender caregiver. We’re going home in a few days. Dad says he’s anticipating our visit.

We try to go home often. We help them do what they can’t do, we break up the monotony, and we try to give Mom encouragement and Dad a rest.

I cry every time we leave. They are, at their core, thankful people-we all are. But life is not easy. I’m sure it isn’t easy for a lot of us.

I remember when our youngest grandchild Cade was only two. He came for a visit with his older brother and sister and scraped his knuckles on the patio playing with his plastic golf clubs. He insisted on swinging at the golf ball in an ineffective way.

I tried to show him a more proper way to do it, but he insisted on swiping the whole club, from handle to head, across the concrete.

That night while I gave him a bath, he showed me three scraped knuckles.

“Owies,“ he said, scrunching up his face in a loveable way.

“I’ll say,“ I said, without adding I told you so. I lifted him from the tub and wrapped him in a fluffy towel. “I have some cream that will make it feel better.“

“Fix it?“ he asked.

I took him into our bathroom and found the Neosporin. (Given to accidents, I have a tube in every drawer in my house.) I rubbed the “med-cine,“ as Cade called it, gently into his wounded fingers.

“There,“ I said.

As we walked out of the bathroom, he stopped and looked up at me. “Thank um, Ma. It feel betta.“ (He had a little bit of a Southern accent at the time.)

“You’re welcome, Mr.“ I said, feeling quite a bit better myself.

We came into the living room, and he raised his arms for me to carry him. Situated comfortably on my hip, he held up his fingers again for me to get a good look. “Thank um, Ma. It feel better.“

We crossed the room and sat in the rocker and he snuggled against me. Then, as though he had just thought of something, he sat up straight and turned to face me, showing me his scrapes one more time. “Thank um, Ma. It feel better.“

As I looked into his trusting eyes and listened to his thankful heart, as I realized how anxious I was to take care of him, how pleased I was that he needed and wanted me, it came to me that this was a perfect picture of God and me, of God and any of us willing to be his children.

Actually, it has been the picture as long as I can remember, and I expect it will be until I finally close my eyes on this life and open them in the next.

One way or another, my Father has always tended to my hurts, and I know he’ll take care of my parents and their children during this difficult time.

So I rest in him and say, “Thank you, Father. It feels better.“