He took me on a picnic today for lunch.

Saturday, he took me to some nearby wineries. He planned it all out. The night before we went to the store and bought things for a picnic. I have the cutest picnic basket that I have had for years and I pulled it out for our little adventure. We didn’t end up eating most of what we packed- chicken salad, gouda cheese, crackers, grapes, strawberries, and Ghirardelli dark chocolate sauce- because they had wood-fired pizza and then we ate dinner at a restaurant at one of the wineries. We had a really nice time enjoying good wine, good food, and each other.

When we were dating, I told him I would love to get engaged on a picnic. And that’s how he asked me only days before my 18^th birthday. It wasn’t quite the picnic I had envisioned, but he listened to me and he tried to give me what I wanted. It was the thought that meant so much to me. Most of all, it was the fact that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me.

As we were leaving work for lunch today, he told me I had two choices of where to go and they weren’t restaurants. It had been raining during the morning so I thought it would be really wet. I asked if he had something to sit on and looked in the back of the truck and saw the picnic basket. Awwww….. He didn’t want the things we bought for our adventure Saturday to go to waste.

Yesterday, it was roses hanging from the shower head and then him wearing rubber gloves cleaning the potties. Saturday, it was a note with the rose in the top of the picnic basket. Friday, it was the rose petals in the shape of a heart with a rose in the center on the floorboard of the truck. Most days, he writes me a letter. Sometimes, it’s something taped to my bathroom mirror or written on it. A year and a half ago, he made the first appointment with the marriage counselor and has made them for each week since. A few weeks ago, it was a leather bracelet with an engraved plate on it with the longitude and latitude of the place where he asked me to be his girlfriend. One night, it was a blow up bed in the bed of the truck with candles and some wine watching the sunset at our farm. Tonight, he is going to make me dinner. I never know what he is going to come up with.

I know he is trying. Hard. But why now and why not then? Why does he want me now? This betrayal healing is ugly. It’s messy. He’s had to comfort me as I lay in the floor in the fetal position crying the ugly cry knowing he did that to me. We’ve had some really ugly conversations. Really ugly. He has to answer my questions over and over again. Consequences. But he is still here and he is trying. And I have to come to a place of forgiveness. I’m just not there yet. And there are certain things I have prayed for that I haven’t seen yet. Time. And….

It’s the little things….. Life is full of small pleasures/happinesses.