When I was a little girl, my father was a firefighter. There is even a picture of me sitting on the back of the fire engine on top of the hoses next to his coat and helmet. I always knew that my father had a dangerous job. I knew that he put his life at risk when he fought a fire, but it’s what his father did before him…the family business if you will. However, knowing his job was dangerous and really understanding his job was dangerous are two different things. My father retired from the fire department when I was a freshman in high school. And that might have been that.

But after I was married, we went on a trip to Universal Studios. And at Universal Studios, there was an attraction called Backdraft - a 10,000 degree blast furnace that simulated what it was like to be in a real fire. And, standing there in that blazing heat for those few seconds, tears came to my eyes, because I realized - really realized - for the first time, what my father had faced in his job. And it was an eye opening experience.

Fast forward to today when our little church band plays the church festival. It was hot. Well, okay, it was really warm. (I reserve the word hot for temperatures over 110 degrees.) It was about 92 degrees when we finished. The first set was great. We sang, we played, we bantered. It was fun! And I got to live out my girlish dream of being a singer on a stage with a band. That was unbelievably cool. Then we took a break. And then we went back up on stage to do one more set. But we were hot. We were tired. And we made some booboos. Nothing really huge. We just screwed up lyrics here and there, missed some entrances, messed up some endings, but nothing really horrible. And the point was to have fun, so no biggie. But oh. my. god. I was so frigging exhausted.

My husband has two “careers” I guess you could say. His main career is music. And he’s been gigging professionally since before I even met him. And I’ve gone to his gigs. I’ve sat in bars for the whole night watching him play. I’ve helped him load in and load out. I’ve sung at church with him since before we were married. And I’ve also performed in choirs for many years. I’ve even sung a song or two with bands that he has been in. But I’ve never had to carry a concert (or in this case co-carry a concert) for two hours. And it was exhausting. If you perform, I mean really perform, you can’t help but leave part of yourself on the stage. Performing is all about cutting yourself open and giving a piece of yourself to your audience. If you do it right. And when you do that, it wipes you out.

So today, I realized that my husband really does work hard for a living. He doesn’t just “play music”. He performs and he works hard and he does what he loves and so even though he is a little better at pacing himself and not exhausting himself as much as I did, and even though he doesn’t normally perform outside in the (very) warm weather (there was a tent and a fan though, thank goodness), he does work hard. And just like a burst of 10,000 degree heat made me “get” my father’s job a little better so many years ago, today I “got” my husband’s job a little better, too.