I hoped my friend Yvette might teach me a little something about art. I never expected her to teach me how to love people. Or anything about marriage. I’ve been married almost 37 years. I thought I had it all figured out.
(Parts one and two are here and here.)
This sentence over Yvette’s bedroom door stumped me.
How can my ordinary life become a fairytale?
Parts of it are messy and broken.
Yvette showed me the rest of her bedroom, but I kept thinking about the fairytale sentence.
“On my wedding day, my sister’s mother-in-love gave me a hankie.”
“She’d embroidered our names and the date on it. My mother started doing the same thing for brides. She made one for my daughter and my daughter-in-love. She even made one for me on their wedding days.”
“Gifts from the heart.”
Yvette’s wedding dress is on display right beside her bed.
“What a wonderful idea!”
Especially since I threw mine away a few years after we married. 🙁
There was an old Bingo card lying on a chipped Formica table.
“This is one of my favorite things. I found pictures of us when we were five and pieced them together.”
“It’s precious. Have y’all been together since kindergarten?”
She smiled.
“No, but we’ve loved each other for a long, long time.”
In their bathroom, a small shelf held a cross, a white card, and some Scrabble letters.
“We leave love notes for each other here. I used Scrabble letters. He wrote, ‘I love you’ on the card.”
Something stirred in my heart.
Once again, I couldn’t talk.
Before we left the bathroom, I noticed pictures near the mirrors.
Below them, I spotted a small sign.
Tiny letters.
This is how Yvette loves others–especially her husband.
Maybe it’s how–
“Love gives us a fairytale right in the middle of our ordinary lives.”
What do you think? Is it possible to experience a fairytale even though our lives are ordinary and messy and broken?
You can find Yvette here:
The Charm House on Facebook.
The Charm House on Pinterest.
The Charm House in Instagram.
The Charm House website.
The Charm House on Twitter.
Love,
Julie
