I’m proud of my husband. In so many ways for so many things. He’s a pretty amazing guy.
I’m proud of him when other people are proud of him. I’m proud of him when others are agitated with him. I’m proud of his successes and I’m proud of the way he learns from his failures.
The problem is that I don’t always tell him I’m proud of him.
The older our marriage grows, the more I learn that words matter. The spoken words matter, but so do the unspoken. The things we learn to leave unsaid because we know it’s best to not say them. The things we refuse to say, even though we know we should. And the things we just forget to say, whether for good or for ill.
It all matters.
Some days, when there are words I haven’t said to my husband or my children or even to others in my life, I think it might be easier to say those words here. To process them in writing and say them to the wide world, offering advice that I know to be true rather than implementing the truth into my own life. Sharing publicly in hopes that my husband or children or friends or extended family will just read it here instead of making me go to them. Writing it out in a relatively generic thought instead of forming deeply personal and sometimes very raw, unprocessed words in a face-to-face conversation. But, it is my goal to never do that.
So, instead of leaving you with examples of saying the words that matter, I’m simply striving to do it myself. To be sure to speak when I am proud, to share when I have a challenge, and to converse face to face when I’d rather try to hash it out with a keyboard.
What spoken words do you need to keep quiet this week? What unspoken words do you need to say?
Not Quite Ordinary 