This weekend proved to give me fodder for a blog post. Nothing like home improvement with my hubs for inspiration.
As we were working late into the evening (think past our bedtime) on our flooring project last night, we both were tired and had sore knees and backs, but I was energized at all we had accomplished over the previous two and half days with relative harmony, which is an entirely different experience than our earlier days of becoming extreme DIYers.
I pondered how Mike and I are wired sooo differently, how we ‘see’ things differently, in our relative temperance and patience and problem solving. We are two very different human beings and that is not only ok, but wonderful and I believe necessary, by design. When being governed by our prideful hearts, we can focus on the frustration and aggravation that our differences present. On the other hand, when we take the time to celebrate that those differences represent different strengths that each of us bring to the table, we tend to be more patient with each other and lift each other up vs. tearing each other apart. It all depends on where we focus. The other thing that struck me is how much, by the grace of God, I have grown in my ability to appreciate our differences sooner rather than just steep in the frustration of how polar-opposite we tackle a project or how we approach problem solving. And believe me, there were problems to solve this weekend as we started flooring three adjoining rooms in an open concept and lots of structural elements to circumvent. Two days in, mentally and physically tired when we began on Sunday, we made a goof in how we started the dining room and had to come up with a solution so that we could get the living/dining room to adjoin seamlessly. Seamlessly was the original plan. At the juncture of to two rooms’ flooring coming together we discovered our error.
My solution, instead of starting all over again was to just make a threshold strip between the two rooms and call it macaroni; having accepted that we don’t live in a perfect world, it seemed a perfectly acceptable ‘fix’ in my brain so we could just keep going. Mike, on the other hand, is more of a perfectionist which in the past, I would let drive me a little crazy. Ok, who am I kidding-it used to drive me a LOT crazy! He’s a pretty brilliant problem solver when given the time to noodle on it a bit. Being the daughter of my father, (giggle giggle), in certain situations, I tend to get a little impatient when I am tired and wanting to get the project completed. Though I am becoming more patient as I get longer in the tooth, I was tested yesterday afternoon. It felt like such a win yesterday when I just chilled. When Mike got very quiet and a little seized up upon recognizing our mistake, I realized I needed to just chill and let him think on it. Thinking on how many times he had come up with solutions that were different than my solutions (‘different’ in a good way!), I just let him be for a bit. I busied myself with other things that needed to get done in the meantime and before I knew it, he had a suggestion that I would have never come up with! I hadn’t seen that fix, but it made sense. Once he shared with me his thought, it was a more efficient solve than starting one side over again and it ‘might just work!’. Turns out, it did. He was frustrated because his solution was going to require us to go back and redo only a little bit of our work (but not hours-worth). So I encouraged him. My strength is being a terminal optimist, encourager and marathoner. I can drive him a little crazy with my optimism . My saying that we can just ‘bang out a project over a weekend’ irritates him to no end; but my optimism is what often gets us started on a project or keeps us from getting completely derailed with frustration-I just keep plodding and know that we will eventually complete the work. What he figured would take us the rest of the night to fix only took us about an hour to be back where we left off.
Usually the thing that drives us a little crazy with our spouses is actually a strength they bring to the game when we ponder it.
What differences drive you crazy about your spouse that actually represent strengths when you think about it?