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“Well you can do that if you want to. It might get in the way when I’m trying to feed my cows though.”
He laughed. “And that’s what I love about you.”
“That’s all you love about me?” she teased.
“I don’t know. There might be something else in there.”
“Well, I love how quick you are to ask a girl to marry you. Hint hint.”
“Really? I wanted to spend the next year courting you. You deserve that much. You know, candlelight dinners, date nights, trips to The Cities and just spending fun time together without any responsibilities.”
“First of all, I don’t deserve anything. And secondly, I don’t care about any of that. I just want to be with you.”
“Really?” he asked, and his tone had turned tender. Maybe there was a little wonder in it, like he couldn’t believe that she could look at him and see someone that she wanted to spend so much time with.
“Really. Do I have to ask you?” She put a hand on her hip, and leaned back a little, looking up into his face and trying to put a stern look on hers.
“You can if you want to. I’m not going to turn you down.”
“Kind of want to. But I don’t want that to be the precedent for our marriage. I don’t want to run ahead of you, and I suppose if you’re going to be the head of our household, I ought to get used to relaxing, and making sure that I’m doing my job. The job God gave me. And not trying to do your job too. After all, if He thought I could do two jobs, He would have given them both to me.”
“You know, sometimes I think about that. How much pressure that puts on me. A man in general I guess. After all, I answer to God for what I do. How I treat you, how I run our household. The decisions I make He is watching, and He wants to make sure I treat you right.”
“That’s funny, because I think a lot of men think that God put them in charge, so they can boss their wife around, make her a servant, while they get to do whatever they want, and the wife has to submit. But I think the way you see it is the way it’s supposed to be. After all, just because you’re the husband doesn’t mean that you get to not be a Christian anymore, and as a Christian, we’re supposed to serve others.”
She didn’t feel it was her place to lecture him on what the Bible commanded him to do, but he seemed to know. Maybe it was something that he’d been thinking about. Maybe he had used those extra years to study what the Bible said about what a husband was supposed to do. How he was supposed to treat his wife, and think about what kind of husband God wanted him to be.
“Exactly. The Bible says I’m supposed to love you the way I love myself. I kind of think that’s funny, since the Bible doesn’t have to command us to love ourselves. No one deliberately is unkind or draconian to themselves. Why would I be that way to my wife?” He brushed a hand down her cheek, and she put hers over top of it, pressing it against her skin. “I think remembering that you are a child of God, and I don’t want to get to heaven and explain to God why I wasn’t kind to His daughter.”
“I couldn’t imagine you being unkind. Couldn’t imagine you being anything but the best husband you can be.”
“I’m not going to be perfect,” he warned her.
“I know. And, I’m unlikely to be perfect either.” She wondered if those words would come back to haunt her. How many meals she would burn, or forget to cook altogether. Sometimes she did that already, where she got so involved in something that she forgot it was time to eat, and it was particularly discouraging when Ashley had been counting on her to make supper. Most of the time Ashley laughed and said she’d done the same thing. She hoped Travis would be as forgiving.
She wasn’t really worried about it. Travis had never had a temper, and because he was so humble, she hardly thought that he would hold her to a higher standard than what he had for himself.
Of course, it didn’t matter what he did. The Bible had commands for her, and it didn’t command her to make sure that he did what he was supposed to. She was just supposed to make sure she did what she was supposed to. And let God handle everything else.
“Were you serious about not wanting to be courted? To just get married?” he asked, both of his hands sliding down as he gripped hers between them.
She squeezed. “Yes. Completely serious.”
“I don’t even have a place to live.”
“What’s wrong with the house you’re living in?”
“It’s not exactly the kind of place where I wanted to bring my bride.”
“We can wait if you want to. But I don’t need a fancy house.”
“I don’t have a place for your cows.”
“We can ask Tadgh if he’ll keep them until we have a place.”
She didn’t mean to rebut every one of his arguments, but what he was concerned about did not bother her at all.
“I just don’t want you to not like what we do. If it’s more important for you to have everything perfect, and to wait, then I’ll suck it up.” She gave a brief smile. Only half joking.
