The Significance of Hand Cream

Marriage is hard.

It's something that Joe and I recently discovered, and are now trying to work on. We are works in progress, and now our marriage is a priority, and something we are vowing to put effort into every single day.

Life gets comfortable, the relationship with the one person you live with and see everyday - becomes routine, and you co-exist. When the kids come along, you may mistake 'teamwork' for marriage, but it's not. The busy-ness of it all with the kids becomes a great excuse for exhaustion, tiredness, and lack of attention to each other.

Joe and I got comfortable, and we realized that's not where we want to be, and are taking the steps to make things better. We're re-prioritizing, and our marriage comes before the kids. They need parents that are in love, and have an example of daily forgiveness, compassion, repentance, reconciliation, and intimacy. They need daily examples of Christ's love for us, and our marriage is the one thing they witness everyday.

So, in an effort to make our marriage better, there are some small changes. For example, Joe started holding my hands more often. He noticed something - we haven't paid attention to each other, and he hadn't noticed my hands had gotten so cracked and dry after all these years of cleaning and dealing with the kids. I'm not the kind of person to go out and buy creams either - I don't wear makeup, and blow-drying my hair is considered 'effort' in my books.

My hands were dry and ignored by me and by Joe. He bought me some serious hand cream (Body Shop) as we were meandering around the mall last night - I lathered it on, trying to restore all the dry cracked skin. I kept telling him how much I did like it - I kept rubbing my hands, saying they were so much better and silkier. He told me he hadn't realized how much work my hands did. My hands, like our marriage, have been ignored - we are trying to restore it again. And with a new sense of appreciation for each other, we're going to keep working on our marriage.

Didn't realize $12 hand cream meant so much to me before.