When Your Husband's Birthday is Christmas Eve

This year marks the 20th time that I have I have had to figure out how to make the most wonderful man in the world know just how special he is to me. I really wish that his birthday could be ALL about him. It would be wonderful to be able to plan a huge bash and invite all of his family and friends to help make him feel special and important.

The only problem is his birthday is on Christmas Eve. That's right, the most precious, important person in my life has to have his special day squeezed in amongst the Christmas chaos.

His kids are all grown with grown-up kids and lives of their own. It's not that they don't love and adore him. They do remember to call and this year we'll be having dinner with one of his daughters and her family. I just don't know if it's a Christmas dinner or a birthday dinner.

His friends are all busy with their own Christmas plans, too. It takes a lot of coordinating to try and make those milestone birthdays extra special for him. Thankfully this year isn't a milestone, he's 71. That takes a little bit of the pressure off, but just a little.

There's a child in the house who is wound right up for Christmas. She went into panic mode when she realized that she'd forgotten it was his birthday. Thankfully I was prepared for that and had a handful of gifts for her to choose from to give him.

I kind of wish that his birthday could be any other time of year. I wish I didn't have to spread the budget, gifts, energy, and attention between him and the holiday.

So all those years ago, the very first time that I had to figure out how I could squeeze his birthday in amongst the holidays, without it feeling 'squeezed', I made a house rule. There's no talk of Christmas until after lunch on Christmas Eve. Christmas Eve morning is all about him.

It's all about the things HE loves and he is the center of attention, at least for the morning. A cake is baked from scratch and his favorite foods are served for lunch. The kids will have to fend for themselves since they don't like anything cooked in sauerkraut.

There was a time in my life that I didn't believe men like him existed. I'd been married three times and each time I had been shattered by the men I had loved so deeply. As much as I had tried to create balanced partnerships in my marriages, I had failed.

I'd come to believe that marriage simply meant letting a man own you. In my experience, I had given my all and it had never been enough. I didn't believe that happily ever after and marriage could co-exist.

He'd been burned before too. He'd had the traditional 'American dream', with a wife, 4 daughters, a good job, and he was building her dream home on a beautiful piece of land, just a mile from the family homestead. Her dream home was an extravagant 2800 square feet, with vaulted ceilings, a sunken living room, hardwood floors, and solid oak cabinets in an open kitchen.

He's not a carpenter by trade, but he poured his heart and soul into building her the home she wanted. It's a beautiful house. It was almost complete and they were ready to move in when she told him that she'd been having an affair for the last year. She was leaving him and their 4 teenage daughters to live with her lover.

She had claimed he hadn't paid any attention to her and two of his four daughters believed her. I suppose it would be easy to see that way. He was working 12 to 16 hours a day building oil leases and roads, as well as farming and building the house. Everything he did was a labor of love, but it didn't leave much time for quality family time. To this day those two girls resent him.

Work on the house came to a grinding halt the day she left. What was the point of building somebody's dream when they had already moved on?

When we met he'd lived alone in that monstrous reminder of his broken heart for over a decade. His girls having grown up and moved on, all he had left was work, the farm and tending to his aging, diabetic, widowed mother who still lived on the homestead down the road.

Neither of us was interested in ever getting married again. To say we were gun-shy would have been the understatement of the millennium.

We come from two different worlds and I don't think he will ever truly grasp all that I have been through. He loves and accepts me for who I am. Not once has he asked me to change and when I decide that I want to try something different, he supports me one hundred percent. He's helped me heal in ways he doesn't even fathom.

I hope that he knows how much I wish I could make his birthday more. The whole world is running on their Christmas buzz, or scrambling to find it though. It seems like an insurmountable challenge. He seemed happy enough with his birthday celebration, but I'm always left feeling like he deserves so much more.