In Day 28 of the dare, I'm asked to identify a specific need of my wife's, and do what I can to help meet it, sacrificing my wants and needs in doing so.  This is actually an easy concept for me to understand and live by at this point, but certainly that wasn't always true.  Today, I am at a place in my marriage and with God where nothing is more important than meeting the needs of my wife.  But for much too long in our relationship, I took Kelli's love for granted and was concerned primarily with my own comfort.  As I look back, I can see that I did only the bare minimum for her -- just enough to ensure that her love and service to me continued.  At times I wasn't even doing that, instead taking actions in my life which were very harmful to our relationship and hiding them from her. In my first love dare, I picked out one household task to do myself that Kelli does now.  It was a disaster.  The task I picked, the family budget, was not one she wanted to let go of, and was pretty angry at how I approached it with her.  We did make an agreement to do that together, but very shortly afterward, we separated and so did our finances, for the most part.  This time through the dare, I'm being a little more careful about what I choose for this day.  Kelli's greatest unmet needs right now are three:  medical help with her back pain and resulting complications, spiritual help with her relationship with God and His place in our marriage, and financially, finding a way to enable her to leave her current job, which has an income level our family budget needs, but which she dislikes intensely and provides no long-term security.  There isn't much I can do about the first two of these.  Regarding the medical issues, I do what I can.  I try to stay supportive and encouraging.  I go to doctor's appointments with Kelli and try to ask questions she might forget.  I've tried to do as many household chores as I can to prevent her from aggravating her injury.  In the spiritual realm, I have to walk softly.  Kelli does understand her need for God to have a bigger role in her life and our marriage, but seeking Him is not comfortable for her.  My counsel and encouragement in this area has been met with resistance and even anger at times, because I'm the last person Kelli wants to hear preaching to her.  We have reached a point where we can talk about this issue without anger, and actually, we're fairly unified now in our plans to find a church and seek God together.  I'm grateful for that progress.  The third issue, her job, is the area that requires the most uncomfortable action from me.  In order for Kelli to be able to leave that situation, I'll have to make choices I don't want to make.  I have, up to this point, chosen to work in a job in my field which affords me freedom with my time to spend with family, working for a company I love, but which doesn't pay me the level of income I could make elsewhere.  Because of financial decisions Kelli and I have made together, our household budget can't afford the drop in income that would occur if Kelli left her job.  So for her to be able to do that, I'll need to find and take a job which pays more.  I've been to the point, a couple of times, of being willing to do this.  But when Kelli announced her plans to divorce a couple of months ago, I decided to stay put.  Now, as we approach reconciliation, I must be ready to make this change professionally.  Preparation for this move starts now, and I will begin to make contacts and put out feelers immediately. Tonight was our fourth counseling appointment, and I've got to say, it was a little odd.  Even after last week's clarification of the direction we were taking, this week's session was a return to very little help, a lack of spiritual direction and a very clinical approach.  We both sought a "pastoral" counselor to be helped in receiving God into our marriage, and after four sessions and $300, our pastoral counselor hasn't really talked about that at all.  When we left this evening, I was kind of quiet.  It was Kelli who said "We do better than that on our own."  Now, both of us are very apprehensive about quitting counseling, because we don't want to just stop working on our problems and let things go back to the way they were.  But I think we've both reached the conclusion that we have to make a change.  Perhaps the new church we're going to will provide a more Godly solution for us in counseling. Part of my frustration with our counselor is that he seems oblivious to the fact that we're separated and are looking for help reconciling.  No plan has been put in place for my moving back home, or even any advice as to what we must do for that to happen.  I kind of blurted out my frustration in the car on the way to dinner, and Kelli said she was sorry.  I sensed that she felt a little guilty about our living situation, but I didn't press the issue because I really need her to be ready for us to live together again before she makes that choice. As we talked, ate dinner and returned home, things were good.  Kelli indicated she was leaning toward asking me to move home, and did ask me to stay the night.  I did, and it was nice -- nothing earth-shattering -- just normal and wonderful.  I slept well and peacefully, with my beloved beside me.