Sometimes I need to remember that I do love my husband.

My DH (Dear Husband and Darn Husband, at the same time) isn't really the provider type. And I'm okay with that. I knew it long before we married, and if I ever wanted to complain about it, the time was then. I conciously chose to accept that part of him, just as I chose to accept our difference in faith, his beard, and his rediculous interest in the Lovecraft mythos.

So I was thrilled when events steered him into his current role, as a SAHD. I had dreams of no longer being in charge of the home, of being able to focus on earning an income and being a mother while he fathered full-time and managed the household.

If you know me, you might have picked up that things haven't yet worked out that way. You might be aware that I am frustrated with how things are going. A few people are aware that I am very frustrated, including my DH.

And quite frankly, I've been a little scared to talk about it. There's avoiding the stress of going through the whole, "Why I'm Not a SAHM" explanation. Or worse, if I shared everything going through my head with someone who didn't absolutely believe that marraige is forever, they might suggest that I get a divorce.

I could definitely imagine someone recommending divorce. After all, my husband seems to be unable to provide our family with any more value than, say, a nanny. He can either work full-time to pay for a nanny to watch our children, or he can stay home and give about the same about of monetary value that way. I can just hear someone trying to make a financial argument about how I ought to trade up. I can hear it because there's a part of me playing Devil's Advocate lately, testing that devotion, trying to get a rise out of myself.

But I have an answer for that Devil's Advocate. And it's the answer to a number of questions I've had for years, which can be summarized by an ex-boyfriend who would have been a great provider and a strong husband: "Why him? Why him and not me?"

I didn't marry a financial asset or a good provider. I married a companion on the journey of life. I married family, and not just any family - I married a husband.

When you are taking a trip with a companion, you don't just walk away from him in the middle of nowhere when things become inconvenient financially, or troublesome in terms of the amount of work you are doing. Especially not when that companion provides richness and wonder to your life just by being there. Instead, you work as hard as you can to care for your partner until you reach the end of your journey, and take joy and comfort from his prescence and his happiness, and hope that he will care for you if someday you cannot go on without that help.

I am tired, I am frustrated. Sometimes I feel taken for granted. Sometimes I think I would have less work to do if my husband weren't here. But the work my husband does is only part of the value he brings to my life. His prescence is more than justified merely by the joy and pleasure I get when he is happy. If all he did for our family was to make himself happy and provide himself with real, lasting joy, our family would be rich indeed.

I've never met anyone else who could make me feel this way. "Feel" doesn't cover it, though. I've never met anyone else who could make me live this way. If he smiles at me and tells me I am doing well, then I find I do not need as much rest or leisure time. If he values a meal I create or appreciates the way I fold laundry, then suddenly those things can become more pleasurable than the most engrossing novel, or the best-crafted video game (I am a geek, of course I enjoy video games).

I do love my husband. He is a wonderful man. And I need to quit focusing on the financial value he provides the family and focus more on the richness my life has because of him. Really, all I need from him is for him to be a nanny, and for him to be happy and to be happy with me. I can happily do the rest, as long as he is happy with both of us.

I think it is our mutual frustration that have made things rough lately, more than any other factor. If we can get rid of that and do the things we need to be happy, like sharing our affection for each other, we would probably be fine. And we have been doing that, and it has helped. That, and I really want to know what my husband needs to be happy. But I think right now, he doesn't know either.

I don't know how to help him with that problem. For me, happiness is usually a clear goal that I am always getting closer to. Sometimes I think he doesn't even really know what happiness looks like, unless he currently has it. How do I teach someone to be happy?

I can think of only one way, but with everything else I'm trying to do - I'm not sure I have the energy to teach by example. I need someone to give me that energy . . . but whom?

Yet again, the ultimate solution to my problems, once they are distilled to their core, seems to be prayer.

P.S. When I talk about how I love my husband, I can't help but draw parallels between that and the way I should love God. "I've never met anyone else who could make me live this way. If he smiles at me and tells me I am doing well, then I find I do not need as much rest or leisure time." I wish I felt that way about God, too. It says an uncomfortably great lot about me that I don't.

But as Father Steve said, faith doesn't always start with love of God. Sometimes it doesn't even start with the desire to love God. Sometimes all we have is the desire to desire to love God. But because of God's love for us, that is enough.

Father Steve was right about an awful lot. So I'll trust him on this, too.