Armando's question

“I’ve got you.  You’ve got me.  Together we make it.”  Our actual prenuptial agreement written on a napkin sipping on a fish bowl at Mary Kay’s tavern, circa August of 1988.

About a year ago I posted “People places and things”.  I had met a man named Armando who had lost his wife and the conversation in the house that day was a God ordained moment.  He needed to talk, and I happened to be there.  I love the people I meet in this job and write about them often without using names.  I told him I had written about our first meeting but like quite a few of my clients, he just does not email or text.  So, I opened it on my phone and showed it to him.  He sat there and read it in front of me. 

In our first meeting he was pretty much home bound.  He said there was literally no person, place or thing that did not remind him of her.  He said he would prefer to cry at home than to cry in public.  He had a lot to work out and he had nothing but time to work on it. 

I told him I was very happy that he was not home the first time I knocked on his door today.  He was out and about, and I remember that being very hard to do and something he had not done much of a year ago.  Funny thing about thinking everyone is staring at you, most are not really looking at you and most of those who are have no way to tell you that they just want to hug you and give you some encouragement.  There just is no good way to do that.  The silence can be very isolating. 

A year ago he asked me this question “Do you have any idea what your spouse is worth to you?  Does she know what she is worth to you?”  Remarkably, that day he turned the tables on me.  He took me by the hand and said “No job, no promotion, no amount of money, no thing you can buy is worth what she is.”  He was no longer talking about his wife.  He was talking about my Mary.

Why is this relevant again?  My wife will celebrate her birthday this week.  She may not use the word “celebrate” as much as she used to regarding birthdays, but I want to mark it.  We’ve been married over half of my life, and I am pretty old, so that is saying something. 

I wasn’t living in a cave prior to meeting her.  I had a lot of opportunities and friends and have good memories of my life prior to that day at the Frank Stramel Softball Fields in Hays, but none of them add up to the life God had in mind for me after that first sight.  Any uncertainty that existed prior to that day disappeared.  Sometimes you just know.  I asked her to marry me about two months after love at first sight.  I knew I was going to ask by the second date but thought that might have been rushing things a bit. 

In my wildest dreams I would not have laid out a plan for us to end up where we are.  I am glad it was not up to me.  People say a car’s milage is okay even if the number of miles is high because a lot of them have been highway miles.  Is doing 80 miles per hour better than 35 mph?  I would rather have time slow down.  It goes so fast. 

We have a lot of miles on us, some are highway, some are more like rough country roads.  If God had shown us the map before we started the journey, I would have asked him to route us around some of our hardest terrain.  But now looking back toward them, the tougher miles mean more.  We had to hold on tighter.  We have learned that the hardest wear and tear on a human can be the most valuable on a heart.  Happy birthday love.

Sweet wife, I hope you know how valuable you are to me.  

If you don’t know your spouse’s answer to that question, maybe you should ask.  We should tell our people more often.    

Challenge:  If you don’t like the answer to that question, do something about it. 

Rick Claiborn