When we got married fresh and love was all over our walls, he suggested we should bring in his cousin to live with us and help around. It was a very big house. We needed the help, but I thought his cousin would be a distraction, so I said, “We are only two here. What’s too difficult that I can’t do alone?”

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So he left the house and chores for me while he concentrated on what would bring us money as a family. He was a very busy man, the kind who leaves before the cock crows to usher in the morning and only comes back at the late hours of the night.

He would come and meet dinner prepared. He would sleep on a freshly laid bed and wake up to a clean bathroom. Keeping the house the way he wanted was stressful, but I was the same person who said I didn’t need help.

We had our first child and then the second. One day we woke up and our marriage was eight years old. I was tired and almost bent because household chores kept piling up. Sometimes he helped around the house, but I needed consistent help, not the kind that came once in a while.

A few days ago, I was so tired I couldn’t even bathe. I was watching TV with him when I fell asleep on the couch. He tapped me to wake up. I sauntered into the bedroom and threw myself on the bed. I didn’t see anything again until morning. When I woke up, he was already up. He said, “Go back to sleep. Let me handle this.”

He surely handled things. He bathed the kids and cooked their breakfast. He got them ready for church. By the time I came out of the bath, my breakfast was ready. I sat there wondering what was going on. When I asked, he answered, “There’s nothing going on. I just have time today.”

It didn’t stop that day. He did it every day while he was on leave. He watched us leave the house in the morning and welcomed us back with dinner already made. He became the wife. I became the husband. I asked if he was enjoying his “wifey” duties, and he chuckled.

Yesterday, we talked about bringing someone in to help around. I said it would ease the burden. He said I’d done a lot already and needed to rest. I was grateful that he understood me on that level.

I’ve been glowing, and out of that glow has come a dimension we thought we had lost since we got married. Everything has changed around here. In the few weeks he’s been home, I feel like a newborn. Our bedroom feels like a place for two young people who got married only yesterday.

It’s Not God’s Law For A Man To Apologize To A Woman

I ask myself why it took him so long to do this. This is not the first time he’s been on leave, so why now? I was tempted to ask him that question, but then I reminded myself to enjoy it and hope good things keep coming as we age. Some don’t change after many years of marriage. Mine did. I can only enjoy it now and hope for more good things as we go along.

—Erica 

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