Men Doing Dishes ....

[ Picture credit to the Karra Hill - and one of her little signs in her kitchen ]

Sunday morning Chris got up before me.    Chris gets up before me almost every single day.   It is because he loves me and knows that my type B personality loves knowing that when his alarm goes off I still get a few more minutes of sleep.   What I love more is that Chris comes to wake me up instead of my alarm clock.   One of the many benefits of being married to the sexiest man on earth, Chris Hill.

So, Sunday morning Chris got up before me and when I walked into the kitchen he was doing the dishes.   It was one of the most romantic things I had ever seen in my life.   Fireworks were going off, rose petals were falling from the sky, and I am pretty sure angels were singing.

I walked into the kitchen just as Chris was finishing drying the last dish and he handed me a cup of coffee and walked with me to the couch.    Where we snuggled and had quiet times before church - and Chris might have started the last book in the Hunger Games.

Later on that day as Chris and I were trying to organize and unpack the last few boxes from our move.  I got to thinking about why Chris doing the dishes was the most romantic things on earth...

I believe it is because Chris was serving me in a way that meant a lot to me.   I love to cook which means I produce a large number of dirty dishes on a regular basis.   Not only does Chris always love my food but he was showing that he is committed to encouraging me to cook - by doing the dishes.   It is not necessarily the doing of the dishes that is the most romantic thing  - it is the thought behind what caused him to do the dishes in the first place.    He thought about me, thought about my time, thought about what I like to do, thought about what I had been doing, and simply wanted to bless me.    Chris sacrificed what he wanted to do at 8:30 on a Sunday morning to serve me.   That is what is so romantic and what makes me feel really safe as his wife.

It is also produced an atmosphere of honor in our house.    It produced an atmosphere of honor in my heart.   As his wife I am called to honor him and I most certainly try to do so.   But there is something about how Chris served me Sunday morning that made me respect him even more than I already did.   Chris serving me in the privacy of our own home when no one else knows about it makes me feel really safe and secure as his wife.   But it also makes me feel safe and secure to serve and honor Chris in public because I know that he will never take advantage of me submitting to and sacrificing for him.   I know that when I prefer and defer to him in public that I am doing so as a cherished and loved woman, and not as a dependent and opinion-less woman.   

At my brother's engagement party the men were sitting in my Dad's office showing off their guns.   I mean real live guns and not the muscles are their arms.    I walked in and asked Chris if he needed me to bring him anything.   This was a little scary for me because I was going out of my way to serve my husband in front of a lot of other men, and in the south sometimes men take it for granted that the women serve.   But --- my husband is a hunk of a man and would never take me for granted or view me as the "southern servant" whose only purpose in life is to serve her man.   Which is why I WANT to serve him and honor him - which in turn makes him want to serve and love me!

It is awesome and produces an amazing amount of respect and fun in our marriage.