Three and a half years ago, I spent two weeks in France on pilgrimage.

Earlier that year, I mentioned to my husband that I knew several women leading pilgrimages that year and that if I was able to go on any of them, I’d pick the one to France.

I promise I wasn’t just dropping a hint at the present I wanted into a conversation. After twenty years of marriage, I’ve learned that if I really want something I needed to explicitly say it. I say, “This book on my wish list is the one I want for my birthday,” or I send an email, “Here’s a link to the necklace that I like.” The pilgrimage to France was a hypothetical, a passing topic of conversation, like a friend’s new car or the spelling of the name of a family member’s baby.

The gift I’d asked for, the gift Chris and I had talked about giving each other within the next year, was time away. We were both turning 40 in the next year or so and would have liked to have gone somewhere together to celebrate, but without a family member willing to watch our kids for that amount of time, we decided each of us would go separately. Chris would go somewhere and I would go somewhere. Specifically, I asked to go for a week-long silent retreat, but I hadn’t yet decided on a time or place.

I didn’t realize Chris tucked away my mention of France, deciding to make it happen for me, until I got an email welcoming me to the trip from one of the leaders of the pilgrimage. He hadn’t said a word. He hadn’t hinted at all. One minute I was going about a normal day, homeschooling my four children, and the next minute I experienced one of the biggest surprises of my life.

Frantically, I called Chris at work to ask him about it. He didn’t pick up his phone, forcing me to leave the voicemail which, I knew while I was speaking, he would keep as his own personal treasure. He had purposely not answered his phone just so he’d get the voicemail memento. If we hadn’t switched cell phone carriers, I’m sure he’d still have it saved.

When we did finally talk the first question I asked was, “How will you watch the kids?”

Watching our kids was no small feat that year. We were homeschooling our four kids, the youngest in preschool and the oldest in 9^th grade. On top of that, our youngest daughter, dealing with substantial delays in her physical development, needed help with everything from toileting to dressing to eating. Part of why I hadn’t made plans for my time-away-gift was because I didn’t know how to handle this childcare situation. Chris worked outside the home and I didn’t want him using his time off to stay with our kids while I left.

Chris’s answer was the second major surprise of the day, “I talked about it with my boss and he’s agreed to let me work from home for those two weeks. I’ll take care of the kids and work from our bedroom.”

I left a lot of Chris’s hands when I went away. I made checklists for our big kids to continue their homeschooling while I was gone (I gave them two weeks off in spelling and Latin, lucky ducks). I decided that our youngest could play hooky from preschool (yay!). The week before I left, I did all the laundry, including all the towels and the sheets. I double-checked all our cleaning supplies and extra toiletries so Chris wouldn’t need to make any extra runs to the store.

But I turned down a friend when she offered to set up a meal train. “Who will make real meals for your family while you’re gone?” she asked with skepticism.

“Chris will,” I answered happily, “He likes cooking.”

So, I went to France for two weeks with my husband’s complete support while Chris cooked, cleaned, homeschooled, participated in the weekly co-op day, oversaw meal prayers and bedtime prayers, solved sibling spats, did laundry, parented, and did his job from a corner of our bedroom. He took our kids out for a fun day at an amusement park. He took them to Mass. He saw and recorded our youngest daughter walking across an entire room for the first time independently. While I was gone, Chris parented for us both and, through his effort, in some part my mothering continued on in our home.

In France, I venerated saints. I ate croissants. I spent my days with the most inspiring group of Catholic women I’d ever meant and had long conversations about lay spirituality and handling moody teenagers and our favorite curly hair products and the feminine genius. And everywhere I went, my family was with me.

I prayed as I looked at the mosaic rainbow in the crypt of the Basilica of St. Thérèse of Lisieux and it seemed like my daughters were in the pew next to me. I scrunched up small, climbed the stairs behind the altar, and knelt at the tomb of St. Vincent de Paul and the whole time I could feel my son David by me. I gazed in wonder at the gardens of Versailles and it seemed like my son Tim did too. I processed at night with a candle through Lourdes and it seemed like my family prayed my rosary along with me. I cried when I saw that a mosaic of the Holy Trinity, the proto-family, guarded the relics of Sts. Zelie and Louis Martin, the parents of five religious sisters including St. Thérèse. I understood that the Holy Trinity surrounded my own family with the same love.

When I left, I realized that my family is always with me. The more I spend time with God and know Him and love Him, the more I see that the love of my family is the daily sacramental realization of the love of the Holy Trinity in my own life.

On the last day of the pilgrimage I tried to explain to one of the older pilgrims, a grandmother who had shared her wisdom with me throughout the trip, about the gift Chris had given me and what this pilgrimage had shown me about the Holy Trinity’s all-encompassing presence in my family. Debbie smiled and said, “When you get home, make sure you say thank you to him.”

So, here’s another thank you, Chris, for all the ways you’ve loved me and our children but especially for the time away that helped me see your love more clearly.

Readings for the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity (Year C) on the USCCB Website