I hate noise.
That might sound like an odd thing to say, but the older I’ve become the more I realize that any type of pulsating, loud noise is like nails on a chalkboard to me. For some reason, I’m just overly sensitive to sounds. It’s so bad that sometimes I wonder what I’ll do if my husband and I ever have kids. Even the squeals of children’s toys have been known to cause me to squirm.
As you might imagine, due to this aversion, I’m not a fan of alarm clocks. So, when mine goes off, I promptly turn it off, usually within 3 seconds of it beeping. Sure, sometimes I’ll hit snooze, but that alarm barely has a chance to chirp before it’s silenced again.
My sweet hubby, however, has a different approach. He’s able to tune out noise. So when his alarm clock goes off, it can go off uninterruped for minutes, maybe longer if I let it And even after he’s turned the alarm off, he can go right back to sleep, waiting for the next alarm to get him up 5 minutes later.
And this drove me nuts.
Until one day, as I was getting ready and bitterly complaining in my spirit, I realized that in the grand scheme of things, alarms were a relatively minor issue. Rather than grumbling, being irritated that the alarm was going off…AGAIN… and yet my hubby was still sleeping, I could make a different decision.
I could graciously wake him up.
In this realization, a larger lesson was learned. As I wrote previously, in a relationship, it’s often easy to promise to make the grand gesture, to risk your life for the sake of your love. In practicality, we often resist doing the small things to bless our spouse. Things like picking up the socks that should have never been left on the floor, or emptying the dishwasher even though you’ve done in the last three times, or turning off the alarm for your husband, and with a smile, waking him up.
And perhaps it’s the practice of doing these small things well that prepare us to make the grand gesture if we are ever called to. And if we never are, at least we have a lifetime of small, yet significant, moments of sacrifice that demonstrate our love.
