For the last two weeks, these flowers have been sitting on my kitchen counter.  Everyone that has come to my house has asked me what I did to get flowers for no apparent reason.  I gave them all the same response, “I wrecked the car.”

This is met with puzzled looks, especially from the guys.

A few weeks ago, as I was driving the kids to their dentist appointment, I hit a barrier on the side of the highway.  If I told you that it jumped out of no where would you believe me? Because it totally did! I dislocated my side mirror and put a heinous scratch down the side of my SUV. We were all fine, thankfully, but I was incredibly upset.  I honestly didn’t see what I had hit, which scared me even more because I thought that I was paying attention to the road.  I called my husband and told him, and he was very calm.  He told me to try to stabilize what I could of the mirror so that it wouldn’t fly off and continue driving on carefully.  I was upset at how much it was going to cost to fix the mirror until I got out and saw the scratch across 6 panels of the car. Then I got really upset.  I texted him several times while we were in the waiting room, just expressing my anger and frustration at myself and the expenses that I had just caused our family.  He repeatedly reassured me that it was going to be fine and not to worry about it.

But my husband is a car guy.  He loves cars. He loves buying them and selling them and all the stuff in between. He spends hours out in the garage cleaning, buffing, waxing, spraying and vacuuming every inch on the car to keep it looking like it just rolled off the lot.  He notices every mark, and there was no possible way to cover this one up.

When he came home later that evening, he came home with flowers.  He presented them to me and said “I know you had a rough day.” That’s it.  No accusations, no angry words.

A few days later, as I was explaining the flowers to someone, my husband chimed in- He told our friends how he had scratched up my car a few days earlier and told them my response.  (I had forgotten about that!) He scratched up the car while pulling it out of the garage and when he came in and told me, I said “It’s just a car. It’s just a thing.  It’s not a big deal- it was just an accident.” Those were the exact words he had said back to me.

I’m not saying this to brag about what an amazing husband I have (although he is pretty amazing) – this was just one time that we actually responded to each other in love and grace.  It was such a relief to hear a response like that one.  We all know the verse- Prov 15:1 “A gentle answer turns away wrath but harsh words stir up anger.”  This was a living, breathing example of that word coming to life.

The flowers are dying, but they are still sitting on my counter.  Just as a reminder of what a soft answer really can do. ~Shiney