I love these little men, my man cubs.
I love to see them together. I love to see them with their daddy, all my boys.
I watch them watching him. Hoping they’re learning what it means to be a man.
A man like their daddy who by being a husband and a daddy, makes sacrifices for them, for all of us.
I recently read a post from Ann Voskamp about romance and The Real Truth About Boring Men.
It made me start to think of my own little men who will one day be big men. Who will hopefully one day find a good woman to marry. What can we teach them now about being a real man? About love, about romance?
“It’s a man who imagines washing puked-on sheets at 2:30 am, plunging out a full and plugged toilet for the third time this week, and then scraping out the crud in the bottom screen of the dishwasher — every single night for the next 37 years without any cameras rolling or soundtrack playing — that’s imagining true romance.”
“The man who imagines slipping his arm around his wife’s soft, thickening middle age waistline and whispering that he couldn’t love her more….”
“Because get this, kids — How a man proposes isn’t what makes him romantic. It’s how a man purposes to lay down his life that makes him romantic.”
“The real romantics are the boring ones — they let another heart bore a hole deep into theirs.” Ann Voskamp
They watch daddy change diapers, pour their milk, take out the trash, teach them to pray, shovel the snow from our front walk and the countless other tasks he does in our home. Not because it’s fun but because he’s a real man.
“There are Fridays. And the quiet romantics who will take out the garbage without fanfare. There will be the unimaginative calendar by the fridge, with all it’s scribbled squares of two lives being made one. The toilet seat will be left predictably up. The sink will be resigned to its load of last night’s dishes.”
“And there is now and the beautiful boring, the way two lives touch and go deeper into time with each other.”
“The clock ticking passionately into decades.” Ann Voskamp
Dare to be boring Little Man Cubs!
My son greeted us one day with “I’m bored. Can I clean the toilet?” (I was stunned and then got him the cleaner and a rag!) My husband told him after he was done cleaning “You have no idea how much you just blessed your Mom and me by being willing to do the things that just need to be done.” Every week he cleans the bathroom now just because he can do it and it helps us. It’s definitely not perfect, but it’s such a blessing!
Boring is good – and I’m so grateful for have a “boring” husband! 🙂
Great post Aubri!
🙂
Lea
Oh that’s great Lea! What a good lesson for him, “being willing to do the things that just need to be done”.
May we be blessed with “boring”sons!