I have the best husband

We went camping this weekend with a group from church. We go every year. It's great fun: hiking, swimming at the lake, campfires, and my favorite part...Mass. Yes our parish priest comes out to join us (this year he camped out too!) and says Mass for us at the campsite and then we have a big group dinner and campfire. There is nothing so lovely as Mass in the woods. You are right there with all of creation receiving Our Lord in the Holy Eucharist; it is truly moving.

The campground that the church group chooses is only about a half hour drive from where we live. So, since I have the little girls, I only come for the daytime activities and then leave my husband and the boys there to camp overnight. Well this time, the girls completely passed out during the campfire activities and they were just so sound asleep that I didn't want to wake them to get in the car and drive home. To be honest, I was a little worried that they would wake up when we got there (like 10:30 at night!) and then be difficult to get back to sleep. So I decided to stay.

Now, we weren't planning on the girls and I staying, so I had no extra sleeping bags or pillows or anything. Johanna was asleep in the stroller and our tent is a 10-man tent so it was easy to just roll her in there and let her sleep in that all night. Mary Rose was asleep in the car seat, so that was no problem either. But what to do with me? Well, my generous husband agreed to share the air mattress (not a stretch - it's a double), and give me his pillow (would be a huge sacrifice for me, but I knew that it wouldn't bother him), and I said I would use the comforter we had used to sit on at the lake earlier in the day.

Well, when we got into the tent my dear husband had everything all set up except he had given me the sleeping bag and kept the comforter for himself. Now I was kind of bummed about that because sleeping bags make me sort of claustrophobic, plus the comforter was a big, thick, king-sized one that I just knew would be comfier. I let it go though because I knew we hadn't been planning on me and we were just making do with what we had. I zipped up the sleeping bag and settled down for the night.

As it was I hardly got a wink of sleep. I was so claustrophobic in the bag and the baby woke up after an hour and had to get in with me, which just made it worse. Plus my back was really hurting because I didn't bring any ibuprofen since I hadn't been planning on sleeping on the cold hard ground. Finally, at some point, my husband got up and left the tent to go use the facilities. Well, here was my chance. I thought it would make it so much more comfortable if I could just unzip the sleeping bag and lay it out on the mattress then use the big comforter to cover us both. That way, the baby wouldn't be smushed right up against me and I'd finally get under that big warm cozy blanket. I kept thinking how annoyingly short sighted it was of him to not see that this was the best way when he'd set it up in the first place. I couldn't wait for him to see my design so he'd know that I have much better ideas and he should just check with me from now on before making any arrangements in the future.

So I got up, woke up the baby by moving her around, unzipped the sleeping bag, carefully laid it all out, moved the baby back, laid down myself and pulled the big blanket over top. And guess what? It was soaking wet! It was still soaking wet from when we had used it earlier at the beach. It had been crunched up in the car and not smoothed out to dry, so it was still very wet. And because it was the middle of the night, it was also very cold. It was a cold wet blanket, and my husband had given me the nice dry sleeping bag and laid under the cold wet blanket himself, all night, and never said a word, just so I could be comfortable.

What do you think I did? Well, I moved the baby over again , zipped the sleeping bag back up, put myself and the baby back in it, and left the cold wet blanket for my husband. Isn't that terrible? I never said a word. But for the whole rest of the weekend, and any time since, whenever I feel irritation with him coming on, I think of that beautiful quiet gesture he made for my comfort, because he loves me, and I feel so grateful I could almost cry. If that's not true love, I don't know what is.