Help Meet

I was in the den when Chup's message beeped in my phone.

On my way home!

Great glory.

The best time of the day is when I get the "On my way home!" text. I always turn to The Chief and say, "Dad is coming home!" and then we do a heart-felt hip-shaking dance routine with our hands waving in the air.

And that is what I was doing when I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. I had been working all day long on housewifery (scrubbing, organizing, bending) and I was about seven inches more than disheveled. I am not the kind of wife who cares much for looking glamorous as my husband crosses the threshold of our home, nor do I have a husband who cares what I look like either, but this look was bordering scary. I didn't look good at all.

My shape was lost in a huge navy t-shirt, stained by snot from the boy I live with (who needs tissue? Honestly.) My gray sweats were heaving from the work it took to stay up around my belly. My face had this pasty look, my pupils were dilated and black residual mascara crumbled around my eyes. And my crowning glory--my hair, you know--was terrible. My stylist Ashlee went on Christmas break and it looked as though I replaced her with a hurricane.

So I texted back.

Just so you know. I look like Garbage Day.

Which meant I looked like the cans of waste we send out to the curb every Tuesday night.

Then my phone beeped again.

Look outside!

A text from my teenage niece Emma.

At first I was hoping she had built a snowman on our front lawn. Next to cats, my son obsesses over snowmen. But Emma is a busy young lady, so I figured her afternoon probably wasn't spent in our front yard secretly rolling snow. Anyway, I slowly climbed up the stairs, crossed the living room and looked outside our front window.

No snowman, but . . .

the most beautiful sunset melting west in the sky. Pinks and purples swirling together in perfect vibrancy. A display of nature so glorious it cause me to reaffirm, "There is a God!"

I sat spellbound for several minutes watching my sky's version of the borealis. Pinks shadows on my cheeks.

And I thought about this talk by President Hinckley about women:

"There came first the forming of heaven and earth, to be followed by the separation of the light from the darkness. The waters were removed from the land. Then came vegetation, followed by the animals. There followed the crowning creation of man. Genesis records that "God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good" (Genesis 1:31).

But the process was not complete.

"For Adam there was not found an help meet for him.

"And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof;

"And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.

"And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman" (Genesis 2:20–23).

And so Eve became God's final creation, the grand summation of all of the marvelous work that had gone before."

Then my phone beeped again.

It was Chup.

I like Garbage Day.

He reassured.

But I was no longer worried about that.