A Post About Marriage, For Lack Of A More Creative Title

This is a post about marriage...as the title of said post indicates.  Gimme a break, I couldn't think of a more creative title after working 70+ hours this week.  Blargh.  

Last weekend I worked most of Saturday, which left Trent on kid duty for quite a while. Nevertheless, when I popped home for lunch he said he hoped the kids napped at the same time because he wanted to work on a surprise for me.   A surprise?  The man had already bought me flowers and been regularly pep talking me as I began to close in on the end of my rope tax season.   I gobbled my fajita lunch that he had made and headed back to the office.  

When I came home and walked through the back door into the den, my exclamation of amazement woke up my napping sister.  You see folks, our den/back room/"house #2" has been an absolute disaster since the kids arrived.  We baby gate off the kitchen doorway to keep Brother in the front area of the house.  Less for him to get into and less space for us to keep track of him in.  So the den became a kid-free war zone of car seat boxes, diaper boxes and a bunch of stuff we had been given or amassed in advance that we did not need for this particular foster placement.   Cue tax season, seminary, craziness and...it all just sat there.

Trent cleaned the whole den.  

He sorted stuff, took stuff to sheds, broke down boxes for recycling and made a nice neat area of kid items that we need to further sort through and either store properly or get rid of. 

Days later we had the following text conversation.  (And herein lies the point of my post, finally.)

Me: You have no idea how much the clean den means to me.

Trent:  Yes I do.  That's why I did it. 

For some reason, I was floored by his response.  He's right.  He knew all along what he was doing, that he was doing it just for me.  That was the whole point.  Me saying he had no idea how much it meant to me was not at all correct.  He knew exactly how much it meant to me. 

That's why he did it. 

Cleaning is no fun.  He could have spent that sleeping-kids time studying or reading or taking a snooze himself after a whole morning of being super dad. But he knew that clean den would brighten my day every single time I came through the back door.  And it has.  

What do you know would bring joy to your spouse, even if it's not super fun for you?

P.S. Can you guess what my love language is?  :-)