Me: What a great pair you are!
Prodigal: I heard something I wanted to share. A happy marriage is the union of two good forgivers.
This is from Grayce Shapiro
How much of a married couple’s time together is spent in quiet pleasures, such as eating breakfast in the morning sun or enjoying an evening walk! Even late at night, when my husband was asleep, I enjoyed reading and writing and thinking, knowing he was there.
But when Billie died, those simple pleasures died with him. I was too tense to sleep. Each moment that I was awake and each tick of the clock reminded me that he wasn’t there. I’d fall asleep only as dawn was breaking, and be wakened moments later by my alarm.
On one such morning I drowsily stumbled into the kitchen, put on the tea kettle, then wandered back into the bedroom and lay down on the bed. Instantly I was fast asleep, the deep exhausted sleep that finally comes, but never when I wanted it to. I had a dream. Billie and I were in the kitchen preparing coffee and toast. I saw him taking bread out of the bag and putting it in the toaster. I could hear him asking me if the water was boiling yet. Suddenly he became stern, saying, “Darling, you have the kettle on the wrong burner.” And he repeated himself. Then he yelled, “Darling, you have it on the wrong burner!”
I jumped to my feet. There was an overpowering smell of gas in the room. The stove! The pilot light that I hadn’t repaired! I dashed to the kitchen, turned off the stove, threw open the windows.
“Oh, thank You, God!” I cried out. And then I added the words that changed my life, “Thank you, Billie.”
Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were unlearned and ignorant men, they marvelled; and they took knowledge of them, that they had been with Jesus. Acts 4:13 (KJV)
Jennifer Van Allen
www.theprodigalpig.com
www.faithincounseling.org
