Husband-hacked

David wrote me a Mother’s Day present {awe}, and here it is.

A Bigger Bean

By David

 

People who know me know about my affinity for sugary inventions of all kinds. No one knows it better than my wife who recently called me out publicly for my love of banana Laffy Taffy, insinuating that the smell of the yellow-colored delights was offensive. Clearly she’s not a fan of soy lecithin or malic acid or Yellow 5. Or heaven.

Because of Paul’s “husbands, love your wives” Ephensianal charge, I must find a way to forgive her. It’s actually not as hard as it sounds.

Two years ago, I finally relented and approved the installation of four raised beds in our backyard. For gardening, not sleeping. My resistance was rooted in a similar food-group hatred as hers, but probably more logical: vegetables.

Don’t get me wrong—there are some veggies I’ve learned to eat. But do I choose them? Not when offered fries or chips or buffalo dip or other categories of dude food. I mean, they come out of the dirt, turn to flowers, are targeted by patrol birds, and infested by insects and cute little disease-carrying rabbits and their friends. But she wanted the beds, so the project commenced.

Two years later, I now understand. To watch the churned-up soil turn into a family of shoots and pods and buds and rods is an experience. I’ve come to use the garden as my Home-From-Selling-Houses cocktail to come down off the day, trading the Truck Stop Honey for a magic-hour stroll through lettuce and edamame and a daily hunt for ripened berries. I look for daily progress and I find it. A bigger bean today is evidence the project is working. Proof of concept.

And the girls love it too. They watch their mom invest in this grace. They pick peas from the vine and eat them raw <insert veggie gag reflex>. They walk with feet of hope to check for readied berries like it’s a new episode of Doc McStuffins: Toy Hospital.

It isn’t hard to draw the parallel between this garden and my little girls. And Holly works both on a daily basis. She churns the earth and drops the seed; she amends and waters and monitors and gets dirty doing it. This is how she pushes back the darkness. She knows something is coming.

Andrew Peterson wrote “Planting Trees” about his wife and covers this very concept:

And her heart is so full; it overflows

She waters us with love and the children grow

So many years from now

Long after we are gone

These trees will spread their branches out

And bless the dawn

I could write a lot right now about the concept of God-as-gardener but that is for another day. This piece is for Holly. And how he brought me the most perfect imperfect mama for this family; the best earthly gardener for those little pea pods.

These ways she loves us compel me to love her more and forgive her quicker. Maybe that’s why I’ve let her off the hook for the banana Laffy Taffy thing.