Wrangler Dani

I want to tell you about my husband. Every time I take Buzz out for a ride, Adam hooks up the horse trailer. When I get back, he carefully parks it for me, sidling it gently next to the house like a pro. He does this without me asking, with never a sigh or a mention of his tight schedule or a dig at my driving. I’m a capable cowgirl, I could do it myself. “Why should you?” he would say.

Sometimes I think of love as a finite resource. I think that if someone is doing OK, or if they’re not OK but they already have some people checking on them, I don’t need to expend my love in that direction. After all, my default setting assumes that if someone checks on me it’s because I have failed or am failing or look like a failure, all plausible outcomes in my mind. Love is great and all, but there might be a catch. (Now that I think about it, this explains why I felt the need to caveat Adam’s act of grace towards me. “I can do it myself!” I yell at the world like a tantrumming toddler. Lordy.)

A couple of years ago I discovered that you can buy Maldon salt in 3-lb buckets and therefore I no longer sprinkle dainty dustings of delicious pyramid-shaped salt over my lunch. No twee boxes of designer salt here: throw it on that pork, shake it on those green beans, gimme some for my potato! Toss some extra on your margarita glass and let it rest in crystalline grandeur atop chocolate chip cookies.  Don’t be shy – there are endless refills for my little “Sel” cellar, there is enough to go around.

If my husband thought in finite terms he’d let me wrestle with my own horse trailer. He’d go about his already hectic day and let me back up the truck three times and sweat on the crank and drive away wondering if I did it right or if my beloved horse is about to come flying out the back on the highway. (For the record, that’s never happened but I think about implausible but terrifying scenarios. The other day Jess and I rode by some t-posts and she said, “I get nervous about ripping my leg or my jeans on these.” I replied, “I get nervous about my horse coming unglued and my getting impaled.” She looked at me with horror, because what an awful thing to carry in one’s brain about a common sighting on the open lands of the West. So that’s who you’re dealing with, here.)

That was a long digression to say that I get an extra measure of love from my husband, not because I deserve it or need it, not because I don’t get enough attention and so it’s time to share with the poor waif, but because he has it to give and he lavishes it on me. What grace.

When Jesus turned water into wine he didn’t give everybody a sensible 6-oz pour and tell them to not drive their donkeys home in an intoxicated state. He didn’t wonder if he should keep some of this power and generosity for somebody else, if these wedding hosts and guests had had enough love for one day. He made more wine, more good, spendy, top-shelf wine, more than enough wine.

I’m no Bible scholar, and this is not a deep theological point. I just want to remind myself that love is just as powerful when it’s not required, when it’s just generosity, overflowing. When my kids clamber into my lap I don’t wonder if they’ve had enough kisses, when my horse puts his nose over the fence I don’t tell him he’s had his quota of pets for the day. I want to love others well. I want to love like Adam does, hooking up the horse trailer every single time, like 3 lbs of fancy salt, like more wine, full to overflowing.