honest

Chris is my rock.

I love his honesty. He doesn't give the poetic or flattering answer, just the real one.

He said something about me being his sunshine the other day. I raised an eyebrow. "Do you mean it when you say things like that?"

He was silent, so I snuggled a little closer to him on the couch, and waited for the answer.

"Well. Yeah, I guess you're a lot like sunshine. But it's not like I was saying that because I mean it every single second of the day, either."

"So you sort of mean it, but at the moment, you just said it to be cute?"

"Yeah."

It was my turn to be silent. After a moment, he smirked sheepishly. "What, was that not the right answer?"

I told him no, that he answered exactly right, and I was taking a moment to appreciate that. I love that he'll tell me things, even if he's realizes it's not what I want to hear.

I struggle with that myself -- I want my responses to be evocative, or uplifting, or at least funny. But Chris keeps me grounded by his example of simple, straightforward communication. While he does love when my word-nerd characteristics come up ("I hope our kids have your way with words,") he teaches me to communicate things as they are, to state how I really feel, to stay in touch with reality.

Which is not, because this reality we've got here is pretty great.