Just You and Me Babe

Just You and Me Babe

Theology in the Trenches

By Kathleen Kjolhaug

 

As I stood over the sink rinsing the last of the evening’s dirty dishes, I prayed. Lord, teach him to be a good husband again. After all, he’s been an impressive father; now help him remember how to be my husband. The answer to that prayer came quickly.

It had been a tumultuous past couple of weeks. I had never been a believer in the Big Bang Theory…till now. To become a believer one merely must usher the last of six children out the door…and with a bang…it all ends. In the quietude of the night I can still hear the door to the stairway closing as the youngest heads off to bed. The urgency of getting out on time for work now slows to a crawl as I lollygag my way out each day.

I pass by closed off bedrooms which await the return of those who once lived within the confines of those spaces. Every so often, I take a peek inside to touch an object or two left behind. Shoes hanging out on racks clomp with a thud each time doors open and close.

“Knock knock.”

“Who’s there?”

“Nobody.”

“Can’t be nobody cause there’s always been somebody.”

 Nobody needing a hug before retiring for the evening. Nobody to cajole out of the house when I’m running late, and nobody to use as an excuse when I am. Nobody to holler, “I’m home” to at the end of the day...except a dog or two.

After turning our house into a home, the children who were so central in that quest are gone. I peer around half expecting someone to burst through the front door validating life as it once was.  And so a phone call or two throughout the day carries. Some form of communication fills the heart as I clamor for kids to have and to hold. But for now I must be still as that is the very essence of what I feel...stillness.

As these reflective thoughts danced through my mind, the answer to my prayers turned back as He gently offered, How about I make you a good wife again. And instantly I knew that His renewal had begun. So back to the beginning I went…back to Genesis.

“And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought to the man. Then the man said, ‘this at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man.’ Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh” (Genesis 2:22-24).  Amen.