Put It Through Hell

The third dream of the evening. It actually seemed to be a flashback of the first dream, taking place during the family gathering. It was just completely independent of the events of that first one.

I was sitting down talking with the family, and Mike and his mom were discussing cooking. She was laughing, saying, "Man! My husband can't cook at all. He can't even boil water right!"

To which Mike replies, "Well, sometimes with the ones we love, their flaws are the things we love the most. They make us love them more. For example, I mean, I seem to recall somebody trying to burn our house down boiling water."

I instantly divert my full attention to the conversation. "Oh, hell no. Please do not tell this story."

He just laughs and continues telling the story that he tells over and over about the time I tried to boil eggs and ended up forgetting them on the stove. Hours later we come home and the house is full of smoke, the smoke detector is going off, the propane burner on the stove is still turned on, and the pot is still sitting on the burner, but it's completely bone-dry. The inside of the pot is black and there are bits of charred egg not only in the pot but all over the kitchen. They had completely exploded.

He turned off the breakers just in case (before we knew it wasn't an electrical fire), I turned off the stove (once I found it on), we opened all the doors and windows and started clearing the house out...but it was only after the smoke had cleared somewhat that we realized the smoke killed my bird. Literally, smoke inhalation was the cause of death of my favorite cockatiel. (We buried her an hour or so later in the front yard, though I'm not sure if she's even still there anymore since the cats and dogs love to dig.)

But, he was telling this story in the dream and I was fighting him along the way, because I hate when he tells the story; it makes me look stupid and forgetful. In my defense, I was pregnant at the time, and you know you don't really have all your brain cells at that point. In the dream, of course, I was kind of laughing as I told him to stop, so I wasn't completely serious. I guess I was just embarrassed.

I remember asking, "Why do you love to tell that story so much? It makes me look stupid. How did that make you love me more?"

This is where he came in with something completely profound, and I wasn't expecting it out of him. He says, "The things we love people for are not the things they're best at, but the things they mess up. We love people for their mistakes and their flaws, because they are challenges and hardships we work through together, and that brings us closer. It's like making a sword. You don't harden your metal with flowers and candy. You forge it in fire and beat it with a hammer and put it through hell. That is how you make something stronger. And it's the same with relationships. It's the hard things that make it what it is, that make it last."

And I just thought that line about forging needs to be in a book somewhere because it's beautiful.