As a teenager, I always wondered what marital love would feel like. I think we all do, right? I was blessed with Christ’s love, sibling love, parental love, familial love, best friend love and young love…. but husband love? What was that going to be like?

Now, as a 28 year old who has been head over heels in love with Marshall Welch for 7 years now, I can tell you.

Husband love feels like Sourdough Bread.

Ok. Maybe not ALL the time, but let me tell you about the last two weeks.  Marshall took it upon himself to learn how to make sourdough bread from absolute scratch.  Now, he will often take on hobbies for his own personal enjoyment, but this one came from him wanting to make food that was healthier for us – and me.  True sourdough that is slow fermented is much better for us than most of what we find in the grocery store, which are made with fast acting yeast and fillers (even the breads made organically).

So, I walked into the kitchen after hearing him banging some pots and pans around well after dinner.  He was simultaneously mixing some flour concoction while thumbing through two books and Google.  I hesitated to ask, but I said “What are you doing, babe?”

“I’m making a yeast starter…I think,” he said.  Each day after I would catch him peeking into bowls, weighing out multiple different flours and water, mixing one thing, kneading another.  I came home to him throwing around one kind of dough on one end of our kitchen and some other dough on the other end, each with it’s own set of notes and steps outlined for the next day.

I had to get up early one morning for work and expected to get out of the shower to find him still in bed.  Nope, he was up working on his dough – shaping the dough early enough to be ready in time for dinner that night.

After making his first loaf of sourdough he was like a child that brought home from school a macaroni portrait of his mom and was so proud of what he had created.  But, with Marshall it doesn’t stop there.  He immediately burrowed deeper into more books and recipes and Google, finding out what flours were more nutritious, fit the parameters that we have been trying to instill in our food, and could be easily found around us.

He did the same thing with pizza – making sure we had an easy pizza dough recipe that we loved, toppings that we wanted to eat, and was something we could have without feeling guilty or breaking the bank (by the way, the recipe for the dough is on the blog).  He’s taken dishes that we loved to eat before and re-formatted them for our unrefined lifestyle.  He’s learned new dishes and techniques so that we don’t get bored or fall into a food rut at home.

Today, he made his second loaf of sourdough for us – delicious and beautiful and smelled amazing!

And there it is. Husband love. Given to me in the form of  Sourdough bread.

From the moment my Cancer team advised us to make a dietary change of this magnitude, Marshall embraced it. He dove into research, recipes, and grocery shopping to educate himself for us…For ME. He’s held me accountable on the days that I don’t ‘feel like doing the work’ and he puts in the work for us when I want to just say screw it. For a long time, and even now, having to make these changes in my lifestyle can be SO frustrating to me. Why do I have to watch my sugar? Why do I have to read labels? Why do I have to spend $5.99 on organic, free range eggs when the rest of the world spends $.99 and is seemingly perfectly ‘healthly’?

Food became my enemy, cooking became miserable, and eating anything indulgent just brought guilt and dread. 

If it weren’t for Marshall, I’d have given this up after a week. I would have adopted all the excuses – well you only live once – well it’s not THAT much sugar – well it’s not my fault, I tried and couldn’t find something better – well someone made them for me – well I can’t just throw it away.

I am SO thankful that he chooses to fight for me, fight for my health and fight for our future. Throughout the last few years, he so rarely dwells on HIS side of this story. The side of this story where he sat on the kitchen floor holding his wife of 1 year absorbing that she might have stage 4 cancer. The side of this story where he was told that his wife of 18 months might only have 6 months to live. The side of the story where he slept in a cold hospital chair for nights on end holding her hand. The side of the story where 4 times a day, for 8 days, he diligently measured and emptied the blood from her mastectomy drains. The side of the story where he dried and brushed her hair every day for 2 weeks……even though he could never successfully get it in a ponytail.

His entire life changed too. 

Sometimes, Marshall gets so much slack from our family and friends because he takes our eating habits and lifestyle so seriously. They will (lovingly) joke with him and poke fun at him about how ‘one cookie isn’t going to hurt’ or how you should ‘treat yourself once in a while’. Most of the time he just smiles, letting it roll off of his back while remaining steadfast in his stance.

What I am FINALLY starting to understand is that, the beautiful difference between him and I (and everyone else), is that  -to him-  this isn’t work. It isn’t miserable. It isn’t about a cookie. It isn’t even a question. To him, this is loving me. To a man that has looked at his wife in a hospital bed one too many times, this is one thing he can do to keep her out of another one. This is one thing he can do to fight for our future.

How I got so lucky? Literally, Lord only knows.

I hope everyone finds someone to love them through Sourdough bread…..