I love to celebrate. Seasons, holidays, birthdays, another sunrise, it doesn’t matter! My family celebrated holidays and birthdays and always made it feel special, even though they didn’t spend much money on it. My dad made a good living for his family of 8, but my mom always said the paycheck went to the barn. My mom loved horses and passed that down to some of her kids. But that’s a whole nother story. You could say we were horse rich and dirt poor.
Anyway I was a surprised young bride on our first Christmas. Dean wasn’t expressing as much excitement as me, and I was very disappointed when his first gift to me was a bed pillow! What made it worse is he had already told me I needed a new pillow and I told him I loved my pillow and it’s fine, but apparently not to him. We got over that but special days didn’t get any more special.
Next was my birthday,  no gift, no card, no special dinner with a cake like my family always had done. He might have said happy birthday, I don’t remember, but I know we did have a discussion and his explanation was his family didn’t do much to celebrate birthdays. And showing a little love on Valentines day? Forget it, the day didn’t exist to Dean.
When two people get married they bring many expectations from their upbringing to their union. More than once I have wished Dean was a little more romantic, ok a lot more! But in a day and age when most marriages don’t last, our commitment grows stronger.  We have fought through dark days, but stubbornly won’t give up on the vows we made to God and each other. We have had to learn forgiveness is ongoing hard work. We have tried and failed and tried again to work on focusing on the positive. Dean has always been there working hard and providing for me and our family. He believed it was important for me to stay home with our children and I was blessed to be able to be a full time mom. And eventually he supported me in homeschooling our children. He took over teaching them high school math! Dean is a planner and he always tried to make whatever we needed happen, and he succeeded. In time I was able to dial back my expectations for holidays. Dean, to my surprise, has tried to remember those special occasions that mean so much to me. Today we are headed towards celebrating 41 years of marriage.
Like most marriages, there have been times when it was hard to feel like working on our marriage. But trying to work through our struggles together and trying to understand each other has made us even closer. The rewards for staying the course have been multiplied over and over again through the years. There is a comfort that comes with being with someone who knows you so well and growing older together. There is special blessing in watching your kids grow up and now grandchildren too. He has always been there for our kids when they need him. Over the years Dean has softened and even become a little more romantic. Dean loves our family and he knows how blessed we are to have them close and in our lives. I love watching him interact with our grandchildren. I am so grateful for him. Happy Valentines Day Dean!