My husband isn’t a handyman. For nineteen years he’s been a steady provider, a great chauffeur for the kids and definitely the man of the hour when someone has the munchies at nine o’clock at night. But when it comes to the house, he has his designated chores--mowing, weeding, watering and hanging the occasional light fixture or ceiling fan. He doesn’t want to be bothered beyond that. I’m the one who’s on a first-name basis with the folks at Home Depot, the one who paints, repairs drywall, miters baseboards and troubleshoots the hundred and two other things that routinely go wrong around our old house.

(As an aside . . . I’ve figured out one reason why I’m such good buddies with the Home Depot folks--I can never find anything without help. Why is that? While I tend to be a scattered sort, I’m not particularly incompetent, so why do I go to pieces the instant I step through the door of this fantasyland of electrical fixtures, PVC pipes and flooring galore? Here’s my first miracle of insight for the day: because I don’t think like a man. My feminine logic insists sandpaper should be shelved near the sanding equipment while the male brain apparently reasons one wouldn’t need sandpaper unless one were painting or staining. Hence, sandpaper is shelved in the paint department.)

Recently, my family added a great room to our home, which necessitated dismantling the entire house to accommodate the contractor, sub-contractors and the like. With my work schedule much tighter than I usually run it, I’ve needed help pulling the place back together after the dust finally settled. So, not being shy, I asked for it. Suffice to say, I was not happy with my family’s response. Inconvenienced. Unaccommodating. My kids got downright testy because I was cutting into their social time.

One might think I was the only one who actually lived here.

In all fairness to my husband, though, at least he didn’t complain while replacing the door knobs on the interior doors. But I couldn’t get over how impressed he was with himself after accomplishing his sole task. He showed me how each knob turned, locked and unlocked properly, so proud one might think he’d built the place from the ground up over a long weekend. He stood there presenting his accomplishment, waiting for me to give him a standing ovation, and my immediate response was to point out that while he’d replaced four door knobs since the start of this project, I’d measured, purchased, primed, painted and mitered all the wood trim in the bathroom; painted the entire hallway from baseboard to ceiling, including the five doors; spray-painted every picture frame in the house to match our new décor--not to mention shopping and financing said décor--then arranged and hung those frames on the walls, complete with picture molding and hard-to-find brass hangers ordered from an online antique hardware store.

And I’m supposed to give him a standing ovation?

Yes.

That was my epiphany for the day. As I was standing there incredulous, while my husband was proudly locking and unlocking his door knob, I had the clarity of thought to wonder how our Lord might want me to respond to this particular situation.

I suddenly remembered the morning’s reading at mass. The Prodigal Son. That father didn’t say to his son, "You screwed up, kid." No. That father welcomed his son, rejoicing over his return and his son’s humility after he’d made a mistake. That father’s gaze was fixed on the joy and celebration of the moment and the promise of a future that might not have been possible if his son hadn’t returned home.

His gaze didn’t settle on the past or the hurt. He didn’t ruin the joy of the moment with recriminations or resentment.

With this insight came the understanding that I faced a choice here: to be fault-finding and ungrateful of my husband’s efforts or to be supportive and appreciative.

I suspected our Lord would likely want me to applaud my husband’s shiny new door knobs. He’d encourage me to look past myself and stop holding up the work I’d done on this project as a shining example and share in my husband’s pride by celebrating his accomplishment. And who knows, maybe with enough standing ovations, I’ll get a little less grief and a little more help the next time I ask.