If you’ve known me for any length
of time you know I’m pretty madly in love with my hubby Bryan McCarty. That in itself is a miracle since I was never one to dream of weddings and having a family... but when I met Bryan he made all that girly being a wife and having babies thing look pretty awesome if he was part of the deal. So, when he asked I screamed yes and the rest has been the most awesome adventure of my life.
When we first got married if you came over to my house or
called I was usually doing something crazy for my man.
Whether I was building a fort in my living room, secret cookie bandit trips to
his office to outright kidnapping him from work and putting him on a plane, I seriously delighted in romancing Bryan’s socks off.
I learned that early in life from
my own parents. My mom is deeply in love with my dad and everywhere we went
from the grocery store to even home depot she would always be asking, “What
could I get your dad?” And my dad was just as awesome as he’d go out of his way
to bring her things from his trips… sometimes even a rock and let me tell you,
my mom would get super excited about that rock.
It didn’t take much because
sometimes the whole point of gestures whether large or small is the fact that
you thought about someone enough to do it.
While my grand gesture days of putting Bryan on a plane to Disney World may
require a heck of a lot more planning now with two little dudes running and
drooling around I learned lately the vast importance of the small gesture.
I’ve been dropping the ball big
time lately in the romance department and while I can make excuses that we were
moving, I’m trying to make our home or that I have two crazy children that need
constant supervision since they are exactly like me... there really was no excuse
that I couldn’t take five minutes to show Bryan how much he meant to me.
While Bryan may have not
noticed I was dropping the ball I sure was and it was making me feel that he
did not know how much I loved him. This came to a head when on our fifth
wedding anniversary, where once upon a time I had grand dreams of a great gift
for him… all he got was a hand written note at 11:30pm that night as if it was
an afterthought. (um... cause it was. In fact he was the one who gave me the idea... SHAME SHAME SHAME!!!)
I cried for days after.
After days of whining to him that
I was sorry and how I’ve been such a bad wife I finally got off my pity party
bus and pulled up my trusty friend Pinterest. I sat Elliot in front of Word
World, put Ethan in an exersaucer and started my plan! It didn’t need to be
huge… it just needed to show him that I purposefully took time to show him that
he above everyone else in the whole world is my one and only.
Each of these little gestures took
less than half an hour to do and that half an hour can mean the world to a man.
When I use to have a bunch of single friends and they’d come over to hang out
I’d inform them quite confidently that men are like girls. They need
constant love and affection and they do. A wife has a very special role… we can
make or break our man. The way we treat him greatly affects him and his life.
If we cut him down constantly or nag him he eventually will draw away from us
and think badly of himself and us. If we build him up though and show him how
truly we appreciate all he does for our family… he can soar.
We need to be women that when our
husband leaves he is sad to go and super eager to return to our arms.
He happened to be out of town
while this “Operation Knock Bryan’s Socks off” went down so I thought the best
way to start was to assault him with love before he even got out of the car. So
I rolled out some wrapping paper on my kitchen island and painted him a sign
than went WAY out of my “clean” comfort zone and let my children put their hand
and foot prints on it. We taped it to the front of our house about the time all
our neighbors were coming home and got many thumbs up of approval.
Next I ran out to our local Party
City and got six balloons. One red one for Elliot that he promptly popped when
he got home and five heart shaped balloons that I was going to attach my
favorite memory for each year we’ve been married.
I placed them on our bed for him
to discover and went on to my next project.
Prettiful Designs wrote a post about
“Seven Days to knock your husband’s socks off”. That was right up my alley so I
decided to do it. Majority of those things I’d done for Bryan so if I subtly
did it… he wouldn’t notice. If I made a point of it though it made it special!
I designed a quick day by day print out, “Fun Friday”, “Sweet Treat Sunday”
ect… and piled some games on the kitchen table with the “Fun Friday” Label than
I let him discover everything on his own. I have all the other day labels and when he least expects it I'll pop them on him.
It was small but as I watched him
rush around the house and experience each one I could see the light on his face
like a kid on Christmas morning.
It reminded me I have the world’s
most important job in being his wife and it’s a job worth putting a lot of
effort into.
Have you knocked your hub’s socks
off lately? If not, what are you sitting reading this for?!?! Go out there and
take that moment to tell him how much you treasure him and all he does for you.
He deserves it. And on the off
chance he doesn’t… loving him like this will make him a man that will soon very
much deserve it. Trust me.
God Bless!
Jessica
