A CLOUDBURST OF LOVE

The photo at left reminds me of a true story about a couple and another heart shape.

It seems this couple--we'll call them Dan and Sarah--have a big white heart painted on their concrete patio floor. Inscribed in the heart are these words:

The heart of this house is my darling wife Sarah.

They said it's a reminder to them that life together requires adjustments--continually!

How did the heart get there, and why does it remind them of this?

It happened this way: Dan decided to paint the patio area one day. "I'm going to be painting out here, so don't come out," he told her.

A little later, Sarah forgot and flung the door open. It knocked a gallon of white paint across the patio floor.

Dan had a decision to make, a quick one: am I going to get upset? After all, I'm the one doing the work, and now she's made more work for me. And, I clearly told her not to come out here yet she couldn't even follow that simple instruction.

But then he remembered something they'd always striven for in their marriage: to never punish (get upset) for accidents. "Our philosophy is that a mate should be very, very understanding when it comes to accidents."

"He could've yelled at me," Sarah says, "and he would've been justified because he told me exactly what he was doing and asked me not to come outside. That would've hurt my feelings, had he yelled. I'm glad he didn't. Instead, he built a memory."

It seems Dan looked down and realized the paint had spread into an almost-heart shape. With a few quick swipes of the brush, he made it a perfect heart and later inscribed it with the beautiful saying.

That was 15 years ago.

"We've learned that if you have a problem in marriage, it's not a problem marriage," Sarah says.

Kristy, here: Wait a minute. That's a profound statement: If you have a problem in marriage, it's not a problem marriage.

Sarah calls the problems in marriage "work areas." "That means we both can work at making it better," she says.

Interestingly, their four children presented them with a plaque engraved with the words Beth Shalom. It means "House of Peace."

They hung it over their front door.