Tag: Marriage

Lunch and Honesty

~ David Willis ~ Leave a comment

We had lunch today at a pizza place in the city. Shared a pepperoni on cauliflower crust between us, I had wings, and somewhere in there I started telling my wife about the rest of the year.

Not telling her the way I’ve been telling her all year — the running commentary, here’s what I’m working on, here’s what shipped. Actually asking. What do you think matters. What should I be doing right now.

I cannot tell you the last time we sat down and did that on purpose.

She had answers ready, which tells you she knows me and knows how I work. She’s a planner, and she had good questions before she had any advice.

Pivot to the Christmas book I’m revising. Finish the rewrite and get it out by the first of October so the promotion lands in the Christmas season instead of after it. That one’s been sitting half-finished for months and it’s the only thing I’ve got with a seasonal window, and she’s right that a window you miss isn’t a window.

Park the newest novel. Not forever — after. Her reasoning was that until the Christmas book is out, and the piece on intent is out, and the books I’ve already published are actually being promoted, working another novel is spinning the creative wheels while the operational work sits there.

As usual, she’s right on the money.

That’s not encouragement. That’s a plan, delivered over pizza.

Then she said the thing I’ve been turning over since.

When it gets hard, it’s easy to go back and keep creating instead of pushing through the hard part. She’s done it herself, which is how she knew.

That’s the whole diagnosis of my year in one sentence. Two books, an album, something written and posted every single day since January first — and almost nothing sold, because selling is the difficult part and making another thing is the part I’m good at. Creating has been my most productive way of not doing the promotion work.

I’ve circled that conclusion for months. Long conversations with myself, walks, notes, a mid-year review I dragged around on vacation and never opened.

She got there over a shared pizza.

What gets me isn’t that she was right. She’s usually right.

It’s that she knows me and has been paying attention the whole time. She’s seen the work I’ve put in this year, every stack of drafts, every project. She has the most trusted vantage point on me that exists, and I don’t pause often enough to ask for what she can see from it.

There’s no dark reason for that. I’m not protecting anything. We just get busy, and the days go, and the conversation that requires sitting down across from each other and being still for an hour keeps losing to the ones that can happen while somebody’s loading the dishwasher.

She told me she’s proud of me. That she’s watched me work harder this year than she’s seen before.

I needed that more than I’d have admitted before lunch.

I meant to have the intent piece finished a few days ago. I missed that deadline.

I’m not going to dress it up. What I’ve done since is put real accountability in place — people who will ask, out loud, on a date.

My wife is the first of them, and she’s had the best view all along.

I’ve had my head down for most of this year. The voice I trust most is right here at the door, and she’s glad to help.

Her Chopsaw

~ David Willis ~ Leave a comment

There was a Canadian comedy show in the nineties called Red Green that my wife and I used to watch together, and one of its running lines was that “if she can’t find you handsome, she might as well find you handy”.

I was not handy. Not even slightly.

She was. Around 2001 or 2002, a couple of years into our marriage, she had a chopsaw and she knew how to use it. I’m fairly sure the first thing I helped with was shelves.

I was hesitant, and I want to be accurate about why, because the obvious answer is wrong.

It wasn’t the tool. I wasn’t nervous about a spinning blade. What I didn’t want to do was get the measurements wrong and make the thing badly — turn good lumber into firewood while somebody watched.

What I did not understand at twenty-three is that you have to make a fair amount of it wrong before you get to making it right. That isn’t a stage you skip by being careful. It’s the price of admission, and everybody pays it, including the people who look like they never did.

She learned from her dad, who is one of the best carpenters I’ve ever been around. Genuinely gifted with his hands. I’ve since learned plenty from watching him too — but she’s the one who put a saw in front of me first.

Twenty-some years on, I build most of what needs building around here.

A seating bench in our dining room. Cabinets. An oak cover for the vent hood over the stove, which I’m still pleased about. A long list of smaller things nobody notices unless they’re gone.

It keeps getting easier. Not because the work gets simpler — because I’ve stopped being surprised that I can do it.

I do have a hard line. I don’t touch plumbing or electrical inside the walls. Anything outside the walls is fair game and I’ll take a run at it. That’s not fear, it’s just knowing where my competence ends and where a licensed man’s begins.

Here’s the part I noticed only recently.

I can’t name one thing I’ve taught her back.

What happened instead is that I got good enough that she hands it to me. She doesn’t run the saw anymore. She tells me what she wants built and I go build it, and that arrangement suits both of us fine.

She trained her replacement. On purpose, as far as I can tell, and without ever mentioning it.

The thing I say most often about all of this is that it isn’t as hard as I thought it would be.

I say it about projects at work. I say it about writing. I said it about a chopsaw in 2002.

I have a chronic habit of building things up in my head to be considerably harder than they turn out to be, and I’ve never fully broken it. The difference is that since about 2002 I’ve had proof that I do it, handed to me by a woman with a saw and a pile of shelf lumber.

Flowering Herbs

~ David Willis ~ Leave a comment

There was a Bath & Body Works fragrance in the nineties called Flowering Herbs.

My wife was given a bottle of it in 1994, four years before I met her. She was still wearing it in 1998, the summer we got together — we both turned twenty that year, she’s two and a half months older than me — and every time she came near me that summer she smelled like that.

They discontinued it.

I have spent a substantial part of the last thirty years trying to get more of it.

You can still find bottles on eBay if you’re patient and willing to be unreasonable. I have been both. The last one I bought cost me two hundred dollars.

Sometime in the late 2000s they brought it back as part of a heritage collection. Ten dollars a bottle, sitting on a shelf like it was nothing.

I bought a couple.

I’ve thought about that a lot since. Twenty of them would have covered the rest of her life for two hundred dollars, which is exactly what I later handed a stranger on the internet for one used bottle.

I’ve also just asked.

I’ve stood at the counter in a Bath & Body Works and asked employees how a person goes about ordering custom bottles of a discontinued scent. One woman was genuinely game — said she’d reach out to corporate and see whether they’d sell me some at a reasonable price.

I never heard anything back. I don’t blame them. I imagine that request goes into a system that has no field for it.

I’ll keep checking eBay.

Here’s what I can’t explain properly to anyone who asks why.

It doesn’t smell like a fragrance to me. It smells like being twenty. It smells like a summer where nothing had gone wrong yet and I had just met the most interesting person I’d ever met. It smells like freedom, and like getting away with something, and like my best friend.

Twenty-eight years together and one bottle of it will still put me somewhere no photograph gets me to. I don’t know why smell does that and almost nothing else does.

So if anybody at that company is ever bored and looking for a project.

There’s a man in Oklahoma who would very much like to buy ten bottles of Flowering Herbs at whatever reasonable price you want to name, and he’s been at this a long time, and he isn’t going to stop.

The Little Things She Remembers: Gratitude Sunday and 27 Years of Small Holy Moments

~ David Willis ~ Leave a comment

Day 32 of the 7-40 Challenge
Sunday, February 1, 2026
Gratitude Sunday – The Thank You Campaign

I’m taking every Sunday this year as an opportunity to express gratitude for a person, situation, or memory that has influenced me in a positive way. Today’s subject: my beautiful bride.

The Memory I Forgot

We were driving to lunch today, enjoying each other’s conversation like we always do. We’ve been married for 27 years now, and it hit me: because we’re both 47 years old, we’ve got more memories with each other than we have without.

Over a quarter century of friendship. Laughter. Love. Memories. Shared sorrows. A life we’ve gotten to build together.

As we talked, we were sharing disdain for the amount of snow still left in our area. That snowstorm last week was something else, making it very hard for both of us to do things we enjoy. She loves being outside, taking care of her garden. I love walking and exercising in nature.

And then she brought up a memory that she remembered and I did not.

Apparently, a little over a year after we got married—late 1999 or early 2000—there was another snowstorm. And I was eager to make snow ice cream.

It was the first time we’d been together when it snowed. In Oklahoma, snow is not the rule—it’s very much the exception.

She remembers me going out onto our balcony with a blue Tupperware bowl (probably knockoff Tupperware we got for our wedding) and filling it with snow. I made a little over a gallon of snow ice cream.

I told her it always reminded me of my childhood—something my mom and I did together during the rare times it snowed. It has a very familiar, very nostalgic place in my heart.

But here’s what got me: She had a memory of me making it for her for the first time.

When She Remembered and I Did Not

When she brought this up, it hit me hard.

The times we share with people can be meaningful to them without us even noticing. Which means we need to share those times and be as intentional as we can be with the people we love.

It didn’t surprise me that she remembered it—that’s what she does. But what surprised me was that such a simple little recipe with snow left a smile from that long ago.

I thought: I’m grateful that there are little moments in our lives that become meaningful just because we share them with somebody we love.

Something that was meaningful to me as a kid has now become much more meaningful to me as an adult because it made my bride smile.

Becoming One

There’s a principle in the Bible that says a man should leave his father and mother and become one with his wife. While the Bible is obviously talking about knowing her intimately and physically, I think we also need to acknowledge that becoming one with your spouse is also about bond, partnership, and shared experience.

It is a holy and awesome union that I think most people today don’t really understand.

We live in a world where people are encouraged to figure out life for themselves, their careers, their bucket list, their desires first—before they ever take the time to settle down and get married. Everything else before settling. A position I wholeheartedly disagree with.

What I found is by making that most important decision in my life early, I now had someone to share those amazing times and those struggles with. I have a beautiful champion in my corner who lifts me up and walks with me, who experiences blissful highs with me and holds me through the lows.

People do not understand what becoming one in purpose, mission, and in our lives really does.

We Didn’t Know Then What We Know Now

Back in those younger days, as we were building our young marriage, building memories, building our relationship, enjoying our friendship, we didn’t know.

We didn’t know we would go through hardship and trials. That we would struggle from time to time and overcome. That our wedding vows would be lived out year over year as they have been. Sometimes through some very scary moments.

I didn’t realize that small memories would become so sweet and full of so much meaning and texture.

I didn’t realize that those shared experiences would bind us together even more tightly, deepening the love we have for each other.

All of it comes together. And all I can do is stand in awe of the relationship I have with this beautiful woman, with a thankful heart to God for the day He brought her into my life and for every day He allows me to be her husband and her best friend.

What Gratitude Discipline Reveals

I think taking a chance weekly to be purposely grateful—not just in my marriage, but in my life in general—reminds me that I am ridiculously blessed.

I am so rich in so many ways that have nothing to do with money.

I am sitting on a gold mine of opportunity if I only tune my mind to it: an opportunity to love people, to take care of people, to serve people, to work through creative ideas, to share with people, to provide for my family, and to live a life that many people would not choose to live because they do it without gratitude or true thankfulness.

I have been blessed so richly in so many ways. How could I be anything but grateful?

It is my honor to share that gratitude tangibly with the world around me and help them, hopefully, be inspired to see the same thing. I can think of no more fitting place to start than with my marriage.

The Key to Building a Marriage

I think one of the keys to building a marriage—especially a marriage that lasts—is by cherishing and honoring not only the relationship but all those small holy moments that make it up.

Snow ice cream on a balcony in a knockoff Tupperware bowl.

A conversation on the way to lunch about too much snow.

Twenty-seven years of moments like these, stacking up into a life we’ve built together.

Sweetheart, I know you’re reading this.

I love you with every fiber of my being and more. I am grateful that you are my partner in this life and that you are my love.

For Everyone Reading This

Not everybody reading this is married. But you will have a friendship with someone special who has your back. You will have opportunities that have been given to you that you could be grateful for. You will have memories that can help spur you on to good things.

It’s all in our perspective.

Cherish the relationships you have. Honor the small holy moments that make them up.

Because someday, someone might remember a simple thing you did together—and that memory will make them smile 27 years later.

Day 32: Complete ✓

All seven habits executed. Gratitude Sunday honored.

Round 1 Progress: 32/40 days (80%)

Eight more days until Round 1 is complete.

See you tomorrow for Day 33.

Day 9: Twenty-Seven Years and Just Getting Started

~ David Willis ~ Leave a comment

Today is my 27th wedding anniversary.

Twenty-seven years ago, I married my best friend. And sitting at the table with her this morning, talking about all the unlikely things that had to align for us to even meet, I’m reminded why Day 9 of the 7-40 Challenge matters more than any other day so far.

This isn’t just about me. It never has been.

The Butterfly Effect (Or God’s Perfect Timing)

April 1, 1998. I walked into a church in Bethany, Oklahoma, volunteering with the college minister—for what, I don’t really remember. As we walked in together, a beautiful lady with blonde hair walked toward us.

The minister introduced us. She quickly said hello, then politely ignored me. Talked with the minister and was on her way. Little did I know I had just met my future wife.

It was like we were destined to meet. But here’s the thing: I was only at that church because of a singing scholarship that brought me to that university where the college minister was a student. My bride had only transferred to that university three months earlier because she wanted to be closer to home. I’d been at a different church where I was the youth leader until just a month before. Then a rappelling trip in late April. A whitewater rafting trip in June.

Every random piece had to fall into place exactly right.

Twenty-seven years later, we’re still here. Still talking. Still building a life together. I can’t even describe how grateful I am.

Here’s the truth: I’m 47 years old, staring down the reality that 27 more years won’t be enough time to know her, to be her friend, to do everything we still want to do together. It just isn’t long enough to love her completely.

But I’ll take every second I can get.

Why I’m Doing This Challenge

For years, I’ve worked on bettering myself in various ways—career, faith, creativity. But I’ve simultaneously neglected things that matter just as much. My physical health. My strength. My energy.

And here’s what crossed my mind this morning: I have to be here. Not just alive, but present, capable, and strong. I want as many more years as I can have. God willing, that’s a whole bunch.

We love being married. We love building our family. We love being creative together. We love working on homes together—improving things, building things, creating beauty out of work. That requires strength. Stamina. Being physically able to show up and contribute, not just watch from the sidelines because I didn’t take care of myself.

I need to be a helpmate to my wife—not a burden she has to accommodate because I let myself fall apart.

I need to be an example for my son. I want him to see his dad doing the hard thing at 47, not talking about it someday. I want him to watch me transform, so when life gets hard for him, he knows it’s possible to choose differently. To start now, not later.

I want to see my grandchildren. I want decades more with my best friend. I want to keep growing, keep achieving, keep building.

The best time to start taking care of myself? Not someday. Not when things settle down. Now.

Because 27 years from now, I want to be sitting at that same table with her, talking about all the things we built together in these next decades.

And that starts with Day 9.

Day 9 Scorecard: ✅ Bible study ✅ Exercise (Workout A) ✅ Reading ✅ Gratitude ✅ Water ✅ Calories ✅ Creative hour

Nine consecutive perfect days. For her. For my son. For the life we’re still building.

Happy anniversary, my darling. Here’s to 27 more—and I’m going to be strong enough to live every one of them well.

The best time to start is now. Not for yourself alone. For everyone counting on you to be here.

See you tomorrow for Day 10.