[From the archives]

We’re moms on a hot day, hiding in the shade to watch our little men play cricket. My friend tells me she was teaching a Sunday school class and God crashed right into her world.

She was telling the kids how Adam and Eve hid from God because they were ashamed.

‘That’s exactly what I do with my husband,’ she tells me.

‘I hide from him. There are dishes in the sink from three days ago and he’s washing them and I’m failing at this wife thing and I’m ashamed. So I hide.’

She goes on to say, that’s not how her husband sees it at all. He doesn’t want her withdrawal. He wants her drawing close.

We talk about God’s great grace in making clothes for Adam and Eve. He didn’t leave them naked and ashamed. He set in motion the plan already in place to send His Son, not just to cover their shame, but to draw us all back close and make us holy.

Then a home-group friend explains that holy means cut out of a template. Framed for a specific purpose. It means different or distinguished or distinct from. It means set apart. Setting ourselves apart – aligning our lives with Jesus because of how He drew us close – that makes us holy, even though we’re still wholly damaged and deficient.

So I’m thinking, whether or not we get it all right all the time as husbands and wives –

We’re holy husbands and holy wives, because we’re set apart exclusively for each other. No shame in that.

We moms talk together about how our little boys whose little legs barely show between cricket shorts and cricket socks in the heat mirage of green field – they tell us about the best girls in the class. The nicest girls. The ones they’re chuffed to sit next to if the teacher moves the desks around.

‘What makes her the best girl?’ we ask.

The answer is not, ‘She’s so pretty,’ or ‘She’s so smart,’ or ‘She’s so thin,’ or ‘She’s so together’. The answer, without fail, from all our four, five and seven-year-old sons is:

‘She’s so kind.’

Joy Forney wrote this, about what your husband really wants from you. Turns out he doesn’t want you to iron his socks or fetch his slippers. He doesn’t want a maid or a golden retriever. Really, he just wants you to be nice to him, and nice to the kids.

I’m trying to remember that –

My husband married his best friend. His girlfriend. Me.

Some days, I should stop hiding behind the crazy and the kids. I should let the to-do list get a little longer, and just be that girl.

. . .

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