This is going to be controversial.

People are going to get mad.

I am a mom. I am a nurse. I am a teacher, cook, gardener, I am a foster parent, wanna be homesteader and homemaker.

I am also grieved by women belittling their partners, not appreciating how hard he works.

I am saddened by the divorce rate.

I appreciate my husband. I appreciate that he works all day at a physically demanding job that I would be exhausted doing after just one hour. I appreciate how he has accumulated the knowledge to complete tasks I can barely fathom.

Of course there are times when I become irritated that the time I have spent cleaning, organizing, teaching and praying silently to keep my cool so that I do not explode with frustration or break down into tears for my feeling of failure – go unnoticed. I start to boil inside thinking he does not see all that I have done. I imagine he thinks I have been sitting around doing nothing all day. He wears his dirty boots on the freshly mopped floor and sometimes his dirty clothes miss the hamper. I could get mad that when he comes home from work and relaxes for the rest of the night while I continue to bustle around getting kids in the shower, making dinner, folding laundry, cleaning up the kitchen. I could be furious, but I’m not. Sure I get frustrated, because I’m human and that’s ok.

But here is my point. He is human too. He wants to relax, that’s fine. I understand he works his butt off all day to provide for his family and when he gets home, he needs to unwind.

I may take care of the daily stuff but he does the chores I want NOTHING to do with! I wouldn’t want to take the trash to the dump (we do not have door to door trash collection here in our neighborhood in Hawaii). When something breaks, I’m not the one who fixes it. He keeps this house and our cars intact! He supports my crazy ideas and remains the rock I cling to when I feel like crumbling.

After almost 20 years together, I have learned to pick my battles. I choose to propagate peace and strive to support him however I can, rather than complain that he is playing Call of Duty while I sweep the floor.