Ben Wilson, LPC

Saturday posts are reserved for play or beauty and Sunday posts for sabbath.  

Today the beauty is my wife. I'm watching her make ornate paper clouds and hang cutout paper planes from the ceiling. She's hosting a baby shower tomorrow for a friend who is married to a pilot. The daughter soon to arrive has an aeronautical name hence the reasons my dining room looks like a sky from The Jetsons.  

I'm particularly grateful for Ann today because I know several young marriages that are ending. Guys are getting into relationships and moving out with no advance notice. Gals are involved with others or saying seeya even though I have seen tremendous growth in the husband. I know very well that with a turn here or there that could have been Ann and I so many years ago.  

In our twenties, in my drinking days she had co-workers imploring her to leave me. While she pondered it she said she knew there was always something good inside of me. She told me so walking down a dusty Ozark road one day. The cattle moo'd approval. 

I had friends telling me you can never trust a woman after she's had an affair. Though almost every day for 444 days part of me wanted to leave her I'm glad I ultimately didn't listen to their seemingly sage advice. There is a way that seems right to a man and usually it involves moving away from suffering.

Ann and I suffered together for over a year until the day God was able to flow his forgiveness through the conduit of our crucible.

So today at age 50 I get to watch my wife love extravagantly, staying up late. She's creating beauty. Beauty creating beauty. The depth of her beauty emerged from suffering. Out of her beauty, she raises a playful beauty that soars above and around my dining room table.