© 2002 Brian Hodges - Please do not remove the copyright from this essay

hen the pastor asked if I promised to love, honor and support Lauren, I said, "Sure I do." How hard is that really? Say, "I love you," treat her well and lend a hand around the house wherever I can. I apparently forgot to consider the fact that my bride-to-be was entering grad school to become a midwife.

I suppose I should have seen the red flags. After undergrad, Lauren took a year off to work as a nurse. Boy did that put things in perspective. I’d be complaining after a bad day, "Geez, my boss was yelling at me, the printer kept jamming and my computer crashed." She’d come back with, "Oh yeah, well somebody died." And that would pretty much be the end of that.

I’ve heard that nurses are the worst hypochondriacs because of what they see on a daily basis. Yeah, I get that. Through Lauren, I’ve learned about pretty much every horrible thing that can happen to a person. I was surprised at just how many orifices one can bleed from. And I knew I was gushing from every single one of them. Acute pain was the worst. I felt every poke, prod and incision that Lauren described – usually in my back or stomach. In marriage counseling, they told us listening was important. They didn’t clarify the importance of doubling over in agony.

But I made it through. We made it through. We made it through her night shifts and her sleep deprivation. We made an agreement that for every gruesome story she told me and for every surgical show on the Learning Channel she made me watch, she in turn would have to watch a scary movie. She hates action and suspense as much as I hate sharp stabbing pain, so it was a nice trade off.

Now’s she’s in grad school for midwifery. At first I was jazzed up about the idea. I mean, she’s studying all the precepts of gynecology after all. And so is everybody else in her class! All girls! Sooner or later, I knew they were going to have to practice breast exams! And maybe they’d need extra practice after class! And they’d all come over to our place, and they’d all be naked, and they’d start to tickle each other, and then the pizza girl would show up with her twin sister, and then… and then… And then Lauren told me all about the fine art of performing speculum exams.

Yep. All the women know exactly what I'm talking about. And all the men are better off in the ignorant bliss I was in less than a week ago.

During her year as a nurse, Lauren only had stories. Now she has books. With pictures. Of very not nice things. As I sit writing this, she’s at her desk writing a paper about Gonorrhea. She keeps asking me to touch… places on her body. You know, just to show me how they feel during a clinical exam. Places that should never ever EVER be clinical between a husband and a wife. She recently brought home a video of not one, not two, but six births. And she made me watch every single one of them. Sure sure, I know it’s supposed to be a beautiful, miraculous event. Blah blah blah. It was like a tragic car accident. I was horrified, yet I couldn’t look away. I just lay on my side, curled into as tight a ball as I’ve ever been since… well since I was the potential subject of one of these videos.

But through it all, Lauren was right next to me. Hugging me, cradling me, kissing my temple. She kept telling me how much this meant to her and how much she loved me. She even promised to watch Lord of the Rings as a thank you. How could I not love, honor and support someone like that? It’s a no-brainer.

Lauren’s Masters program lasts eighteen months. She’s two weeks in. Every day I come home and ask her how her day was, even though I probably don’t want to know. But as she starts telling me all about babies and the birthing process and the miracle of life, I can’t help but feel the excitement in her eyes and the passion in her voice. Passion about something that is more than just a career. It’s a calling. So I just smile, remembering why I fell in love with her, and why I said, "I do."

Then she asks me to come feel her cervix – and the scalpels pierce my stomach yet again.