A Revelation from Malcolm in the Middle

I was watching Malcolm in the Middle today. It was the episode where Lois and Hal (the parents) have a pregnancy scare; it's mostly a flashback episode based on Lois's pregnancies with Francis, Reese, Malcolm, and Dewey.

What struck me the most was the ending scene. Lois is about to give birth to Dewey in her backyard (there was a chemistry set incident, thanks to Malcolm, which kept the family from getting back into the house to find the car keys) when she and Hal are fighting. Lois finally says that she can't have another kid if their relationship would continue to suffer like it had been since Francis's birth a couple years earlier. So she says, "Here's what we'll do. I want you to tell me three, no, five, no, SEVEN things about me that you love and I have to believe every one of them."

Hal struggles to figure out seven things he loves about his wife (the first few of them being ridiculous, such as "I love how your toes all look like they came from other people") before he really gets the ball rolling. Then the two start confessing how much they love each other and want to share their lives with each other and would never trade that for anything.

And as I watched this scene, I cried, because it was one of the realist, rawest things I could think of that would make a relationship shine. The fact that the two of them realized they needed to fix their relationship, then sat down and brought back the reasons they loved each other was so honest. Then I thought, I want that - to be able to fight, sit down, and bring up exactly what's wrong, how we fix it, then remember that no matter what, we can find and remember things to love about each other.

Honesty. Truth. Real. Genuine.

Much love and God Bless,
EPD