My husband and I have a little chalkboard. It is a sweet little thing – message leaving or instruction, but not so my husband nor myself.
I’m not sure why dusty white chalk appeals so much to me. Could it be the way it lingers on my fingers, reminding me of early years in grade school? Could it be cleaning the eraser, something that takes me back to my small self in a classroom long, long ago? Where I stood, clapping the little fuzzy things together to create large clouds of dust (let’s ignore the lung health issues for a moment)?
For whatever reason, I love little chalkboards. And the one my husband and I share has brought a strengthening tone to our marriage. I’ll let you in on a little secret as to why.
The chalkboard ended up in our closet after one of our many moves. We’d transferred from a much larger home to a rental, while we were waiting to decide the next step in our lives. There was no place for that little chalkboard and I rather liked it, with its dark cherry frame and little ledge to keep chipped fragments of chalk and a petite eraser.
So there it would sit, on the side of our closet, out of the way and nearly forgotten.
That is until one day when my husband, for some sweet and unrestrained moment, left a written message for me on it. It was simply something similar to an outline of a heart with our initials inside it. The significance of the drawing did not exist in its elegance, for after all even a small person can draw a heart.
But the fact that my husband left me a “secret love note” on that little chalkboard warmed me. I stood there staring at his message, long after he’d left for the day and therefore presumably long after he’d written it. “Oh, isn’t that sweet,” I couldn’t help but say. And then I pondered.
I pondered on the kind of man who would do such a thing … especially on a morning in which he was rushing to get to work. And I realized it is of such things that a marriage is built. Those tiny moments where we stop to take a little piece of us and leave it for another do more to de-fragment a marriage than we might suspect (or fragment, as the case may be).
That was when I realized how significant the little things are that we do in our marriages … for good or for ill. How often we can be wrapped up in our lives like the clothing we quickly put on each morning. Yet if I took time to create minute little moments for my husband, just as he’d took for me, how much better off our marriage would be and would grow through the years.
I’m keeping that little chalk board. It may be old-fashioned, but old-fashioned is good when it comes to steady, and true, and full of love.
You just might want to get a little closet chalkboard, too!
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For an excellent article to read on strengthening homes and marriages, click here.
