Sacred Ground Ministries

One evening a couple of weeks ago after a particularly long week of graduate school work I came home, dropped my bags at the door, kicked off my shoes, and darted to the bedroom to change into pajamas. As I passed through the hall, a smell stopped me in my tracks. It was the delightful smell of lavender scented bleach. Now, perhaps for you delightful and bleach do not belong in the same sentence, but to me, nothing makes the house feel more clean than floors that have recently been mopped with bleach and shiny porcelain.

This smell made me pause and sigh a breath of relief that I didn’t have to clean on tired feed. It also made me smile as I thought about the one who had brought about this lovely smell, my dear husband. As many of you know, the last 24 months have consisted of nearly non-stop school work and logging hours as a counseling intern. The journey was a difficult yet necessary and fruitful one. However, it is thankfully not something I have had to do alone.

My husband David has scrubbed bathrooms, made dinner, washed dishes, delivered coffee without even receiving a glance up to say thanks, driven me to late night classes, and cheered (or dragged)  me through. The point that I’m hoping to make here has nothing to do with egalitarianism or roles within a marriage but rather my real life experience of what it means to be on a team with my husband.

Being on this team means that I was given the gift of pouring myself into my study and career without feeling guilty and not having to deal with the mundane tasks that just have to be done. Being on a team means that many times I have done the same for him. This is the essence of the message of Ephesians 5, Paul’s teaching on marriage. It is so beautiful to see the Scriptures come alive in your own life and home, even if I couldn’t always see it in the moment. Marriages flourish when spouses are mutually submitted to one another and loving in self-sacrificial ways.

When I began graduate school two years ago this month, I thought that little was changing, that our lives were not being reshaped around this entity called school. However, now in hindsight I see the great amount of effort it took and how much it changed not only me as a person and my level of experience and knowledge, but how much David and I grew as a team. I am grateful that one day the smell of a clean bathroom as I went down the hall reminded me of this.

That day I was reminded of how much small acts with great love can make anything possible, even graduate school.

Until next time,