In the 40 days of Lent, many Christians will give up something like caffeine, alcohol, or sugar—a small way to personally identify with Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross before Easter.
This year I decided to do more than give up sugar. I decided to give up my habit of nudging or pressing my husband to see things my way.
In the weeks leading up to Lent, two words kept coming to me: “Throttle back.” Easy, right? It just meant that instead of convincing my husband, Robin, to see things from my point of view, whether it was how much we should save for vacation to where to set the thermostat, what if, for the next 40 days, I were to let go, and give him space to figure out his own preferences? Even more, what if I could be all right with us not always being in sync?
The first test of my experiment fell on Ash Wednesday, which happened to also be Valentine’s Day. My husband had reserved a table at a romantic restaurant in Dallas, and we both dressed up to celebrate.
I wanted to go to an Ash Wednesday service before dinner because I have come to love the liturgical church calendar. I didn’t grow up with it or with the ashes that are smudged on foreheads at the beginning of the Lent season, but it means something to me now. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. A reminder that our days are numbered and precious.
On his drive home from work, Robin called to chat about our plans for the evening. I was scrambling to get ready for our special date.
He kindly agreed to join me at church before dinner, but after I described the details of this service, he said, “We’re getting ashes?”
“Yes,” I replied, certain that this shared marking of our foreheads would lead to a feeling of spiritual intimacy.
“Nope, not me,” he said. “No ashes put on my forehead.”
I pressed back. “But Robin,” I said, “it’s a beautiful sign of faith that we can share leading up to Easter.”
“It’s not even in the New Testament,” he shot back.
I faced the perennial fork in the road, one I almost always barrel into.
“Pause, Peggy,” I cautioned myself. “You choose. Either try persuading your husband that your theology is superior to his, or surrender your way of seeing, with no expectation or resentment.”
Only 40 days of this, right? Can’t be that difficult. When we arrived at the church, parishioners had filled the sanctuary, and the organist was playing a Bach cantata. As worshippers walked toward the altar to receive their ashes, my husband stayed planted in the pew.
I got up, climbed over his knees, and walked up the aisle behind couples hand in hand, as two familiar voices battled in my head: “He’s so stubborn and unloving.”
“Stop judging him.”
After the service, Robin and I quietly got into the car and drove to the restaurant, where a 20-something valet parking attendant opened my door and let me out onto a beautiful, candlelit entrance.
There I stood in glitzy Dallas, in my pearls and red Valentine’s dress, hair perfectly coiffed, black ashes smeared across my forehead.
The valet cocked his head and looked at me with a mixture of curiosity and ridicule. He pointed to my forehead, “What's up with that?”
Embarrassed, I tried to explain to him in as few words as I could. “Well, we’ve just been to church where they remind us that from ashes we came and to ashes we return. It’s something Christians do before Easter.”
“Ahh,” he said, looking at me now as though I had just walked out of a 15th Century monastery.
About that time, dressed in his sports coat and silk pocket scarf, my husband walked around to my side of the car. He stood right next to me, tall and handsome with a rugged face and a clean forehead.
I stood surrounded by ash-free couples streaming in, like us, to share a romantic Valentine’s experience.
Then Robin did something unforgettable. He moved in closer, face to face, and reached his hand to my forehead. He rubbed the soot from my ashen cross onto his finger and then onto his own forehead, in a matching cross. He said nothing.
At the dinner table, we sat across from each other in soft candlelight. We talked about our days, our dreams, our plans for the future, but the only thing I saw was his forehead—and the partner I always wanted.