Trash

He works in a fast paced, changing environment. He works on teams, communicates well, and is willing and able to accept more responsibility and complete tasks on-time. He wrestles internally with competing realities-- the Kingdom, fiscal responsibility, politically correctness, power structures, careers, and personally held ideals.
She also works full/ part-time developing a career/ helping to pay the bills. Also, she tends the house. Laundry piles. Dishes dirty. The apartment continually moves towards entropy (disorder)-- all would end in chaos if not for her diligence to scrub those surfaces, make and complete lists of chores, or ask for help on the weekends. She also wants to live Rightly, richly, loving and establishing relationships, dreaming, and living out those dreams.
However, it is at the end of day and dinner is at hand. She is the chef. He is the sous-chef. They create a healthy, fulfilling, and tasty dinner. Dishes stack, trash cans fill, counters sully . . .

[Enter marriage book stage right] It asks:

Who will do the dishes? Who will take out the trash? He is tired and mad, she is frustrated, she asks nicely, he is upset about something about at work, he never, she always . . . etc.

I have encountered this situation in books about marriage, conversations about marriage, and I have even made dinner with Noël and observed the trash after cleaning chicken, peeling potatoes, emptying week old foods in search of the perfect container, all on top of last nights shrimp peelings.

The bottom line is that I am not going to force her to take out the rotting trash, down into the dark alley, to deposit the leaking, dripping bag into a full, putrid community dumpster.

Sense guides me. Logic reveals the "right thing to do". Compassion impels me to serve. Love and duty go together like Simon and Garfunkel.

Picture credits