Spouse-imony

So, in all fairness I have to admit that I stole this title from another blog. But I thought it was hilarious, because of how many "testimonies" are filled with "I love my family and they're just the best"-type thoughts. Anyway. If I wait until Father's Day to do this, it just won't be surprising. And if I wait until Ben's birthday, well, then I'd be tempted to let it be his birthday present (which would be lame). Randomly, then, here's my testimony of Ben. :-)

Ben is one of the most persistent people I've ever known. The most blatant example of this would be summed up by our time dating....I'd already been on a date with one of his brothers, and had determined (because in my teenaged wisdom a personality that I disliked would be common to all siblings) to never repeat the experience under any circumstance, with any of the boys in his family (that's another story). Ben quietly persisted, but not in an annoying way. He liked my family and the place where we lived (I mean, who wouldn't, 40 acres of trees, garden, orchard and creek!), so he found a way to hang out from time to time. I muddled along on my way trying my best to ignore him, but gradually realized what a good kid he was (he was 16, I was 17). He was honest when my siblings asked him hard questions about how the world works, but never abrupt about negative things. I liked that a lot. And he continually found things that would interest me, without asking me about them. He's very perceptive. After a year or so, I finally decided that it might be a good thing to go on a date with him, and the rest is history.

The other thing about our "courtship" (if you can call it that, it was really more just the time between when I came to my senses and when we got married) was that it took a long time, and we were very frequently separated by inconvenient distance. Ben was so patient about that, I think his level of devotion is pretty unique (but maybe I just flatter myself). I never worried about it, because we kept in contact with letters and phone calls. When I was at BYU he was home, when he was at BYU I was home, we had one semester together and then I left on a study abroad. While I was gone he left on his mission, and I left on mine before he got home. During the year or so that he had at home while I was on my mission, he dropped an occasional letter but with NOTHING romantic until the very last one he sent, which I received about 4 days before I was set to come home. And oh boy was THAT one a doozy....my companion loved it, she couldn't believe that I wasn't already planning a wedding. Ben's a great letter writer. As it played out, I was just grateful that he was completely supportive of me on my mission, and because we hadn't made any sort of "I'll wait for you" promise, there was no pressure. I think he was more sure that we should get married than I was, but he never let on at the time. And he certainly didn't do that "I've received revelation that you're supposed to marry me!" garbage. I've not met many men who are secure enough in themselves to say "This is what I want, and I'm going to work to make it happen. If she chooses otherwise, I guess I'll just figure something out!"

We got married in the Nauvoo temple. Ben's family didn't particularly like that idea, mostly because of a family tradition of getting married in Washington, D.C. It would have been all well and good to keep with the tradition, except that my parents were married there. My divorced parents. I could only imagine how uncomfortable the whole thing would be for my parents and their spouses no matter what we did, let alone if we somehow ended up in the same sealing room where they had been. Anyway. Ben was completely supportive, and as I remember it Nauvoo was his idea to begin with. We both had emotional reasons for feeling attached to Nauvoo, and I thought his consideration for me and my family, enough to break a family tradition on his part, was amazing. He continually shows that kind of careful consideration for other people, even at times when I don't notice a need for it. Again, just amazingly perceptive.

After we got married and I finished my student teaching, Ben still had two years of school to finish (changing majors versus knowing what you want to study and completing two summer terms will create that sort of disparity!). Since Ohio requires a master's degree after a certain time teaching, I decided to just go ahead and knock it out while Ben was in school. We had our first baby at the end of my first year, and from that point on I really got to see Ben's selflessness and supportiveness. We shuffled schedules so we never had to leave her in daycare (though she did spend 20 minutes at a time with AL and Vanessa a couple times a week! Love you guys...), and Ben held my hand through the woes of early breastfeeding (and then was supportive when I didn't feel the need to drape myself in a blanket-tent every time I nursed).

I've said before and I'll say again that there's a huge difference between a verbally supportive husband ("Sure, honey, it would be GREAT if you get a PhD. You have an exam tomorrow? Good luck. What time do you think you'll have dinner ready? Oh, and did you iron that shirt for me?) and an actually supportive husband ("Hey, you've been rocking and carrying the colicky baby for a couple hours now. How about I take her so you can get your reading done?"). Ben is absolutely supportive. Not just ideologically, but practically. I love seeing the way we share work....the kids are just up for grabs, we figure that out case by case. Generally I do most of the shopping, cleaning, cooking, laundry, and gardening (in the summer) and Ben does the dishes, cleanup, and settling the house for bed. But during weeks that I'm overloaded, he just picks up the slack, wherever it happens to be. It works great, and I love him for it! In the course of our whole marriage I've never heard a "Hey, where's dinner"- or "How come my shirt isn't clean"-type comment. And the few times when he comes home to a mess, he infers that the kids have been monstrous, and rather than say anything just scoops them up and swoops them away to play - either in their rooms or at the park, so that I can get my feet under me again.

Getting a PhD was never in my plans. Not in a million years. For one, because I thought there was no way I could be a professor and be a good mom (how I thought high school teaching would be any better, I have NO idea). Then I met Valerie. Which is just another post entirely. In a nutshell, though, she flew in the face of all of my assumptions about working and mothering. And she helped me see (convinced me?) that I was smart. I talked to Ben about it, and we jumped in with both feet. More shuffling of schedules, more compromising on who did what, mixing his master's work with my PhD courses....and still somehow we managed. I think the only reason we survived it was because our Heavenly Parents thought we were on the right track and helped push us along.

My favorite Ben story was from the period after our second baby was born, when I was reading for my qualifying exams. I was sleep deprived because of teaching, reading, and nursing a newborn. Baby J was about 9 months old at that point, and didn't need to nurse at night any more. But it was the easy out! I could nurse him for 10 minutes and plunk him back in bed, or walk the floor for two hours. One night it was just too much, and Ben woke up to me sobbing in bed next to him while nursing because literally 5 minutes after I put my books and notes away, the baby woke up. Ben looked at me and said "Why are you doing this? He doesn't need to nurse." I about lost it, until he said "When he does this, wake me up. I'll get up with him. You need to sleep." I could hear the "or you're not going to make it" that he was kind enough not to articulate.

We survived. I think a lot of the survival credit goes to Ben, because he helps me keep an even keel. He makes time for me to run, he spends more time with his kids than a lot of moms do (which for an LDS man is somewhat exceptional), he cooks, he cleans, he sees what I've not managed and gets it done. Without asking me, or waiting for me to ask him. For me, that's what equal partnering is about - finding the strengths you both have and combining them to move forward, working around each others' weak spots.

Ben's also a good feminist. He hates when I say that because of the negative connotations that the word has for some people. But there's really not another good one - personist? Humanist? Neither works. Here's a story to illustrate what I mean. Recently when they called me to be the camp director for the ward (HOORAY! I'm so excited), the second counselor asked Ben's permission first. Ben said "Why are you asking me?" and the counselor said something about needing to know that Ben would support me. Ben responded that of course he'd support me, provided I wanted to accept the calling, and that they'd have to ask me. I love it! He finds a quiet, non-abrasive way to say "You know, really, I'm not going to give my permission, but I'll tell you that I'll help her to do it if it's what she wants to do." The idea that I would need his consent for anything is pretty ridiculous, and he recognizes it as such, and then does something about it! He continually surprises me.

The last thing that I love is maybe what I love most. Ben's a great dreamer. And he's good at framing the dreams as things that we can actually do, then my obsessive planner nature kicks in and we work on getting there. We've always had in mind an idea of what we want to do....move out to the country and largely self-support, mixing jobs in for as long as the lifestyle we have now holds out. Step by step we're doing it. And I'm so excited to see that it can be done - when you paint a castle in the sky, it can look like a farmhouse, and you can have some hope of ending up in it! I love it.

I love Ben for his love of nature, his perceptive nature and tendency to nurture, his willingness to share an opinion with me that differs from mine without condescension, the way he loves his children, and the goodness with which he treats me. We've had rough patches for sure....neither of us is perfect of course, and some of the imperfections can be pretty glaring. But like Ben told me last night, "Help me love the people that choose to sin differently than I do" is a good attitude to encourage tolerance. When I met him I knew he was a good kid, and he's definitely grown into a good man; but even when I married him I had no idea just how good. He's pretty amazing.

I'm so glad that he's a part of my life, and I'm excited to see what we'll get into next!! And wow, I think this is the longest post I've ever put up.