Delayed hope makes the heart sick, but fulfilled desire is a tree of life. --Proverbs 13:12 I remember some nights when I was living on my own, I couldn't fall asleep. On some of those nights, I cried, alone in my room where I was safe from the pitying eyes of my friends. I don't like crying in front of people. In college, my longtime roommate -- my best friend there, in whose wedding last year I was maid of honor -- didn't see me cry until two or three years after we met. It's a trust thing, a privacy thing, maybe a pride thing too. And whether it was lack of sleep or hormones or loneliness, on those nights I cried I knew I'd feel better in the morning, that the inexplicable sadness I felt would not feel so ... unbearable? Most of the time, if I cried -- if, once in a while when -- it was late at night, some hours after I'd seen a touching interaction between a friend of mine and their child, or after I'd watched a chick flick. The kind where the ...

I pride myself on being independent, if it wasn't obvious from other posts on my blog. I fix my own household problems.  I hold myself accountable for stocking the pantry.  I wax my own car(s).  I generally like practicing being a responsible adult. But having my husband fix things around the house -- actually, finding the broken things himself and fixing them promptly -- has made me feel unexpectedly well loved. I've been married three weeks now, and spent less than half that time with my husband actually in my house. Between honeymooning and sending him off to a work site a 5-hour drive away, I've not spent as much time at home with him as normal newlyweds, I imagine. He's an engineer-type who gets a kick out of fixing stuff -- or at least feels more relaxed when things aren't broken. In the 9.5 days he's been at my house, he's already found and fixed several issues: The dryer that wouldn't heat The too-long dryer vent hose The screen door ...