I have spent nearly my whole life trimming my husband’s hair. Especially as Sunday approaches, I always make a point of checking his hair over the weekend.

It feels like just yesterday, in the early days of our marriage, when I was startled and unsure what to do at his sudden request to trim the back of his hair. Yet now, it is often I who suggest giving him a haircut. In his youth, my husband’s thick hair at the back was abundant, but over the years it has thinned away, leaving only sparse strands of white. Each time I face his graying hair, I feel a pang in my heart and sense the passage of time.

Just a few days ago, I woke up determined to finally trim his hair. But that morning, the clippers in my hand felt duller than before, and the style simply refused to come out right. To make matters worse, while carefully trimming near his ear, I accidentally carved out a patch the size of two coins. I swallowed the scream rising in my throat, only to make another coin-shaped patch beside it. Cold sweat began to run down my body, and my thirty years of barber’s pride seemed to collapse. By the end of that morning, I had somehow managed to leave four unsightly patches on my husband’s white hair—a strange and unfortunate mishap.

“Darling! This is terrible! I completely ruined your hair today!” I cried. My husband, gazing only at the front mirror, replied gently, “No, it’s fine! It looks good—why do you say that?” His mood was lifted by the shorter cut, and he seemed completely unaware of what had happened at the back. As I stood there, unable to continue speaking with a distressed face, he reassured me: “If I’m happy, that’s what matters. The important thing is that you took the time to care for me, not how it looks. You are always the best barber!” With that expression of indifference to the mishap, my task for the morning was complete. Still, I couldn’t help but chuckle to myself, imagining that sharp-eyed Nellie at church would surely make a remark.

Mistakes and faults that would never be tolerated in the world are often accepted and forgiven with love between husband and wife. It is mysterious. When a wife’s mistake and a husband’s fault are borne together as one body, the strength and wisdom that emerge often surpass imagination.

As the years pass, a couple comes to realize that their two hearts eventually beat as one. I once read a line in Living the Dare that warmed my heart: “Your spouse is a living book to be read forever. Within it lie dreams and hopes not yet fulfilled, hidden talents and abilities like jewels waiting to be discovered. The only way for these treasures to be revealed to the world is through your choice.”

On that day of the haircut, his words—“You are the best barber in the world!”—were more comforting and encouraging than ever. And I bowed my head anew in gratitude for my husband’s lifelong choice never to stop dreaming and hoping for his foolish wife.