After visiting family one afternoon, both of our babies were sleeping in the backseat on the way home. We pulled into our neighborhood, and I see two little girls at a table on the side of the road.
Lemonade? Cookies? (I love calories, and lemonade and cookies are worth the cellulite.)
As we get closer, I don’t see pitchers, cups, or food. It honestly looks like an empty table, but my husband said “We have to stop. They’re selling something.” He digs in his wallet and pulls out a dollar. As I roll down the window, we see the seashells.
“Twenty-five cents for one!” I hand her our dollar and ask her to pick out her very favorite for us. She proudly said, “Actually, for one dollar you get TWO!”
As we’re pulling away with our purchase, I realize, thinking to myself, that it was my husband that wanted to stop. Sure, I commented on the “seashell stand,” but I didn’t ask him to stop. I was honestly ready to get home and count down the minutes until bedtime.
It was my husband that took the initiative to stop and to grab his wallet. He knew it would be something small from us, but a big deal to those little girls.
I know it seems obvious – we all change in some ways over time, but how often do we stop to appreciate the changes? My husband does not have the same heart that he had when I met him. 8 years ago, he wouldn’t have noticed the stand, and he absolutely wouldn’t have given a thought to stopping. Now? Now my husband will come home with Girl Scout cookies and not eat one of them. He‘ll buy the raffle tickets and never check the numbers. He’ll stop and buy two tiny seashells on the side of our road. His heart, morals, and compassion have grown. He has an exemplary heart of a dad.
He’s become a husband and a father since I met him all those years ago, and when I stop to make a comparison between who he was then and who he is now, I realize how much my own heart has grown for him.
Our dollar was money well spent, and those shells gave me the moment when I saw my husband’s heart as a father’s heart. May we always remember how blessed we are to be our husband’s wives and our children’s mothers – when the blessings are big, and when they’re as small as seashells.
