Marriage Letters: What We Do – Your Job, My Job

I believe every week I will be a day late to the party, but will join in writing a letter to my dear sweet husband each week. I’ve got a story to tell about waiting on the Lord with my husband. I will be jumping in on Marriage letters moving forward! I’d love it if you’d join me, too. Thank you to my friend, Alex at Journey to Beauty who highlighted this wonderful writing meme. And to Amber at The Runamuck for inspiring this very public display of affection. BRAVO!

Dear Scott,

I sometimes wonder how we’ve made it these thirteen-some-odd years. Still, you are steady, constant and unwavering. On the other hand, I am tangent driven, off on a new adventure, jumping on the next wave out of this season of our life and on to the next.

We have watched five babies grow in the last thirteen years, two of them your natural children and three of them mine. We have experienced the loss of the eldest boy, and sent him ahead to heaven. We have somehow found our way not only to survive, but thrive.

The last four months have been a whirlwind of expectancy. In September, the gentle stirrings of change began in my heart compelling me forward to destiny appointments and decisions. Today, I am pregnant again with possibility and overwhelmed by the love of a man who will support and encourage me even when he is so uncertain. Still here we sit moving ever closer to my dream and another season of life where I remain at home to pursue my dreams of inspired communication, art and yes, even a radio show.

At the end of a long day of managing tasks and computing, taking phone calls and praying over the phone with the hurting, aching souls of our church and community I rush out the door of the ministry center and down the street across town to pick up my best friend and my precious love from his job as a Tele-Comm Cable Splicer here on the Tarrant County side of the metroplex.

I think about most of our marriage and how we have made sacrfices – you’ve made sacrifices so that I could be at home with my children, volunteer in ministry at the church and to discover with great confidence my God-given identity and my unique purpose on this earth. All the while you work with your hands in the wind, sunshine and rain with an odd mix of men as varying in age as they are in interest, personality and perspective.

So much of what I do is about people. After all, “At Gateway Church we are all about people.” Sometimes I my job requires wisdom in dealing with a crisis, or just discerning about the issue at hand. Other times I need all the task skill I can muster – which often still comes in a smidge under what is really required.

While I am off negotiating, facilitating and administrating relationships between people and pastors, people and ministry, or people and God you are off wiring them for sound.

Your job is becoming a lost art in the world of wi-fi, cellular services. But, you get up and go to work every single day without fail to wire up the neighborhoods, businesses and communities for a nationally recognized telecommunications company. You often tell me about MDUs, T1 circuits, cut-a-rounds, cut 48s and terminal tails. Honestly, it makes my head spin a bit. I don’t know an MDU from a Terminal Tail – I wonder if I event got the initials right on the MDU.

I cannot begin to fathom how you do that day in and day out. My mind and my heart could not take the mundane routine of wire splicing and troubleshooting communication problems, but you thrive there. You creative problem solve, do your job with excellence and take great pride in your work. And on the really tough days you come in frustrated and vent about Yahoo who didn’t do X so you had to do Y and it should have been Z in the first place. Yep, that is really what happens on a daily basis for you.

You used to call me and tell me things like you’d been in a fender bender or the Union has circulated rumors of a strike. And, I – Mrs. Opinionated & Dramatic – would emote wildly and vomit my feelings all over you. That is until I learned to pray.

We’ve prayed down every threat of a strike, layoff and through a few seasons of “PHASE” as a result of those accidents that you wanted me to reassure you about. Over time, as my faith in God and you grew, I learned how to encourage you, tell you everything – including you and me – would be okay no matter what happened, but truthfully in my heart I was crying out to God. I reminded Him about His promises and plans and how He would not allow His children to be ashamed or go about begging for bread. I would declare and decree until the roof would blow off the house that YOU would not lose your job, go on strike or get cut in a round of lay offs – and SO FAR… So Far, God has agreed.

This morning as I prayed for you just before I dropped you off at work I got a chuckle in my heart as I heard God whisper that you are a COMMUNICATION SPECIALIST. Why do I chuckle? Because the last thing you would like to do is COMMUNICATE. See – it really is Laugh-Out-Loud funny. But you are, you help connect other people together and facilitate their ability to communicate – one to another – every day of your life.

That is a noble, thankless task that people often do not even recognize as valuable. Still, it is not lost on me. As we jump off the diving board of life into the deep end of this ocean we’re swimming in, I pray that I never cease to thank you and praise you for the way you stick so I can fly and soar and be all that God created me to be.

Now that I think about our jobs are not that different – we are both in the business of facilitating relationships it is just the means by which we do it that come out so different.

I love you, Mr. Bentham, even though you still owe me one for telling our cousin I am a “glorified secretary.” 🙂 Not really, but that did stick in my craw a bit when you said it.

I love you very much,

Michelle