ours

Business as usual around here this weekend. At any given time there was at least one power tool humming, one person covered in sawdust, or one can of stain open on the garage floor. We attack Saturday with a sort of frenzied desperation, as if it’s a thing to be conquered. And still there aren’t enough hours. Even if we work through lunch and continue on until the sun starts to dip and I’m scrambling to find a lamp or two.

We write our obituaries as we go. Morbid, I know. I blame the heat.

“Caleb and Jackie died from exhaustion due to many consecutive hours spent in the garage in a freak occurrence now being called ‘Death by Doughbowl’. Thankfully they died doing what they love—”

“I wouldn’t say I love working on projects,” he interrupts.

“For real?” I’m shocked. “Then why do we do it?”

Truthfully many of the things we choose to do in our free time are grueling and time consuming. Blood, sweat, and tears. All. I can think of a lot of things I’d rather do on a weekend. And sometimes I wonder if I’ve pushed us too far. One too many whacks with the hammer. One too many 13 hour Saturdays. This led to a major wifey meltdown during which I said a lot of awful things that really boiled down to just one thing.

“Why are all these things always my idea? When something goes wrong or you have bags under your eyes from working in the garage all day and taking classes at night, I feel like it’s my fault. Everything is always my fault!” Okay, so I have a talent for dramatics.

He patiently sets me straight. It’s not his project or my project. Everything is ours no matter whose idea it was. We share the responsibility for everything here. And as that sinks into my soul I realize he’s right. Somewhere along the way and with no warning we became one. Gone are the days when I cooked dinner alone in the kitchen and he worked in the garage unaccompanied. We spur each other on with the daily promise “I’ll help you with that.”

So when I’m bone weary and it’s a million and one degrees outside, but the grass still needs mowing, we exchange air-kisses across the yard. One of us pushing the mower and the other weeding, it occurs to me that we might have stumbled upon the reason God gives us another human being to love so completely until death: together we overcome.