Tonight I cried at dinner. It felt especially awful because we were on a date to celebrate Patrick’s incredible finish last week. So not only was I stressing out about what got me crying in the first place, but then I started stressing out about spoiling Patrick’s dinner. Not my proudest moment.

I wish I could control the things I hold onto, the things that seep under my skin and set up camp there. The things that keep me in a constant state of worry, so that I can’t even smile at my husband across the dinner table on date night.

Today I was reminded of a situation I’ve tried hard to forget about, a situation that is one of life’s mysterious, unfair surprises that blindsides you and rakes open all the wounds you thought you spent months repairing. My troubles floated to the surface today, to the top of the barrel. And all that was left for me to do was cry.

And then he reached for my hands.

I write about Patrick on this blog in nearly every post. I supposed I’m biased in thinking that his wisdom – in all its glory – is worth sharing with the world. But I could write and write and write and never fully convey all that is this man, because to describe him in his entirety, there are just no words.

He spoke about my anxiety, how I’ve developed this addiction to dwelling on things that I can’t control but wish I could. People who bother me, things that go wrong. Insults I hear instead of compliments I receive. I am never satisfied with the work I do, unsettled by conversations wherein I stumbled in my speech. I think about these scenes, replay them on the screen in my mind until I convince myself that, in yet another way, I’ve failed. Every day another emotional beat down.

He told me that I’m someone who’s worth loving, even by me. Especially by me. He told me that it’s okay to be sad about things that are unfair, about things that don’t work out for me the way I think they should. And that those disappointments shouldn’t overshadow the parts of my life that are happy and great. He walked me through his last tournament, how he was so incredibly nervous that he couldn’t feel his hands. How he could hardly grasp his putter and left the ball six feet short. How easy it would be to dwell on something like that, but instead he thought about coming home, about playing with Kya and spending time with me.

You always hear stories, he continued, of old people who have, with age, gained wisdom and have learned to be happy and free of worry. He went on to say that we’re all hateful and mean and unhappy and miserable, but he said, we’re all happy too. And sometimes you have to fake it ’till you make it. Because one day you won’t have to try at all. Because when someone points a camera at you, your instinct is to smile.

He told me a story. He stopped at Waffle House after his tournament and ate alone at the bar. When he arrived, there was a rambunctious group of teens who were arguing with the waitress about a sandwich and why it wasn’t on the dollar menu. After hearing that, yes it’s similar to another sandwich that is on the dollar menu, but this particular sandwich was not, they got fed up and left. After a few minutes, they – there were about nine of them – came back in and sat down. They ordered a bunch of food, and after the chefs had gone to work cooking it, the group got up and left. Patrick watched as these rude people turned their backs and walked out of the diner while the waitresses scrambled to figure out what to do with this food. They looked worried, he said, and they were clearly stressed out by the whole situation. He left his waitress a $9 tip on a $6 bill.

“You probably made her day,” I told him.

“That’s what I was trying to do,” he replied.

He made my day too. And how could I keep dwelling on the negatives when I’m married to a man like that?

He told me to count my blessings, to dwell on the good things, the happy things. And even though I’ve heard this a zillion times, today it sounded different.

I took this portrait of Patrick for a photo class I completed in the spring, and while he doesn’t look especially happy, I love this shot of him. He was already hours late in leaving for a golf trip, yet he still posed for more than 100 frames while I snapped shot after shot of his perfect face. A side note – I always look through all the photos in my shoots and Patrick’s always there: the trusty lighting test subject. I have hundreds of “test” photos wherein I’ve captured some of my favorite shots of him, and somehow he always looks absolutely content, no matter what. And in every photo, one common theme sews them all together: Patrick and his unrelenting willingness to serve me.

I don’t know where I’d be in this life without him in my corner.

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