All for Love

What does a man do for love? What will he sacrifice? What burden is too great to shoulder for his beloved?

It has ever been the case that, day after day, month after month, year after year, my wonderful husband has cheerfully labored on behalf of his wife, his family, and his flock. Self sacrifice is a way of life for him, be it physical labor around our home and ranch, working on our cars late into the night, or countless offerings of time and treasure to help others. It is an incredible grace to live with him and be his partner in life.

But there are times when his self abnegation surpasses human comprehension, and yesterday, he made a sacrifice that could only -ever- be motivated by true love. Here’s what happened:

My Windows box (which he had been using, but gave to me a few months ago to give me more speed) crashed, due to the usual malware that infects Windows OS. I finally agreed to let him put Linux on it, and since then he’s been working to make sure I could still process my photos. Adobe Creative Cloud is Windows-dependent, as are the other memory-hog software I use for photo processing. So he gave me a Virtual Machine, and I was overjoyed to be able to continue pursuing my passion with photography!

But the speed was very slow because my box does not have the necessary RAM. Now, we do not have the money to buy me more RAM. His first inclination was to let me try working my photo magic from his computer – which also runs Linux – and lo, it was miraculously fast! I was so grateful!! But then, as he stood beside me looking at his brand new ThinkServer, upgraded with extra RAM, a solid state drive, and graphics card, he mused, “I should give this one to you, and take yours back…”

Shocked, I exclaimed, “No, honey! You need this one for your programming and… whatever you do…”

“No, this is way more computer than I need. I mean, I love this computer! Don’t get me wrong – but you need it more than I do.”

I was dumbfounded. And then, simply, and with a small, satisfied smile he said, “I always give you the computers I love.”

And there it is.

That, my friends, in engineering language, is True Love.