Beautifully Imperfect, Amazingly Challenging

"Marriage was never meant to make me happy all the time.

Marriage is a decision to honor God by honoring the one He entrusted to me."

Lysa Terkeurst

My husband and I recently celebrated our fifth wedding anniversary.  On one hand we stare in disbelief, wondering where the time has gone.  On the other hand we have felt the weight of family issues, major life changes, and adopting a child - all things that can make a short amount of time feel a lot longer.  Regardless of how quickly or slowly the years have passed or what has transpired while the clock has been ticking, we have a beautiful and amazing marriage.  

I did not say it is perfect.

I did not say it is easy.   

I can no longer remember what it was about, but several months after Toby was born an argument erupted between Collins and me. Later, after the guns had cooled, we realized that the explosion happened because it had been weeks since we had really talked to each other. And it scared us. In that moment we made a decision - outside of our individual relationships with God, our marriage would be our highest priority. 

"The husband and the wife should be like the hand and the eye. When

the hand hurts, the eyes should be crying, and when the

eyes cry, the hand should wipe away the tears."

John Chrysostom

After praying, reading scripture and receiving some quality counsel from some incredible people, we felt like God was speaking into some key areas of our matrimonial journey.  Yes, there are days when we are tired, ill-tempered, busy or just plain don't want to give our relationship the attention it needs. Most days, though, we get over ourselves and do the work, because we've had a glimpse of what can happen if we don't.

Though we fall woefully short in all of these areas at times, we try daily to honor God and each other in these ways: 

• Talking and Listening - We make it a priority to talk and listen to each other every single day.  Some days we may only get 10-15 minutes, taking the time to fill each other in on our respective days and get on the same page about a discipline issue with our son. Other days we have the luxury of a lengthy discussion when we share our struggles, dreams, hopes and fears, and work through current conflict or problems we are facing.  

• Humor - It's not always easy to find humor in life's day-to-day grind, but it is necessary.  If we don't laugh frequently, tension grows until minor incidents become major blow-ups; we don't have the time or desire to clean up messes that never had to be to begin with. 

• Address Conflict Immediately - Sweeping it under the rug and pretending it didn't happen is the worst possible way to deal with conflict, as is expecting the other to instinctively know he/she has caused conflict without being told.  We may take several days or even weeks to come to full resolution of our conflicts, but it only takes us a few minutes or hours to express to the other that a problem exists.  When issues arise, getting them out in the open is more than half the battle.  

• Physical Affection - We hold hands. We kiss. We hug. And we make sure to do all three in front of our little guy to model for him what normal, healthy affection looks like. We've also learned that daily doses of non-sexual affection make intimate connection easier and more meaningful.   

• Children Come Second - We love our little man more than anything in the world, but not more than we love each other.  He is the most important person in our lives - outside of each other. If we rearrange God's established order and elevate him to a place he was never intended to be, we are handicapping him as a man and as a future husband and father. We are loving him best when we love God first, then each other.  

Five years in and we are still head-over-heels in love. We firmly believe that is because we are grounded in the hard, sometimes tedious work of investing in each other.  It's the blood, sweat and tears we put into walking through life together that produce our joy. 

"Follow God's example, therefore, as dearly loved children 

and walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us

and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God."

Ephesians 5:1

The passage of scripture we chose for our wedding, Ephesians 5, calls us to submission and sacrifice, love and respect, and ultimately to holiness. We have come to understand that the pursuit of holiness, following God's example as it was lived out in the person of Jesus, is what transforms our imperfect and challenging relationship into a marriage that is both beautiful and amazing.

I Blinked

"For a thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by,

 or like a watch in the night."

Psalm 90:4

Recently my family and I took dinner to some dear friends to share a meal in celebration of the birth of their second child.  In spite of the fact that we were in the presence of a 2 1/2 year old, an 18 month old, and a 3 week old, dinner was peaceful and enjoyable (well, as much as it can be for our friends who are in the throes of the sleep deprivation, emotional and physical chaos, and adjustment that a new baby creates).  Despite the one year age gap between them, our toddlers were having a large time together, eating dinner at their own tiny table for two, then playing peacefully with only squeals of laughter alerting us to the fact that they were in the room with us.  Then it hit me.  Square in the forehead.  Right between the eyes.  My baby isn't a baby anymore.

Every mother has this moment, I think.  The realization that, at warp speed, the infant whom you firmly believed would never allow you to sleep another full night for the rest of your life has become a real person.  He doesn't need or want you to feed him anymore, or even cut up his pizza for that matter; he will eat his full slice like a big boy thank you.  He no longer has to be watched constantly while in someone else's home to make sure he doesn't touch or break things or otherwise get into something he shouldn't.  He's not attached to your leg or constantly climbing up your body out of fear or shyness or whatever it is that makes little ones cling rather than interact with others.  At some point, unbeknownst to you, he stopped being a baby and started being a little boy.  And even though you've been present for virtually every second of his life from birth to this moment, you never saw it happening, not really, until just now.

As an older first time mommy who moves in circles of other first timers who are 15-20 years my junior, I am aware that life and experience give me a slightly different perspective on the dog days of parenting.  In no way am I saying that younger mothers don't appreciate their kids or treasure many precious moments in the infant, toddler and pre-school years.  But a different level of appreciation accompanies the birth of a child to a forty-something first-time mother who had tossed in the towel ten years earlier believing parenthood wasn't a part of God's plan for her.  There has never been any doubt that I am a much different, much better parent now than I would have been in my twenties.

Unlike my twenty-something self would have been, I am determined to appreciate and embrace and commit to memory not just the happy, funny, easy moments, but the tedious, mind-numbing, pull-my-hair-out ones too.  And for the most part I do just that.  I typically start my day reminding myself to soak it all in - the great, the good, the bad, the ugly.  I'm conscious of little grins, quick hugs, and long snuggles.  I take deeper breaths and have a much calmer approach to incessant crying, temper tantrums, whining, and willful disobedience.  I get excited about back yard picnics, swimming lessons, trips to the playground, and reading 12 books at nap time.  I remind myself constantly that gibberish, toddler-speak, and a general lack of adult conversation or other intellectual stimulation is a finite phase, and all too soon I will be lamenting the loss of this stage.  A few short years ago I would have had no patience for any of this; in fact, this life that I treasure would have been pure torture for my younger self.  Now, lest I paint a false 'Ward & June Cleaver' image that anyone who knows me would balk at anyway, let me assure you I'm a typical mother too, experiencing things that are common to all of us regardless of age.  Are there days when my husband comes home only to wish he'd been asked to work late because the house looks like a tornado touched down, there's no dinner on the table (or on the stove, or in the fridge, or in the cabinet), and not only are Toby and I having massive meltdowns, but it's highly possible that the stuffed animals are crying too?  YES!  But...it's much easier for me to recover from such days, evaluate them for what they are, and even find bits of humor and snippets of future great memories in them.

My point?  Knowing myself as intimately as I do, I am acutely aware that the mommy I would have been as a 26 year old with a two year old bears no resemblance whatsoever to the mommy I am now as a 46 year old.  The younger me never would have reflected on a week that consisted of little to no sleep, maybe two showers, a thousand poopy diapers, a little person lying in the kitchen floor kicking and screaming, saying the word "no" every 30 seconds, never going to the bathroom alone, and six loads of laundry piled on the bed waiting to be moved to the floor so we can sleep and thought, "these are the moments I never ever want to forget!"  But that's what I do.

My real point?  As much as I treasure this gift of motherhood that came to me much later and very unexpectedly, and as determined as I am to burn each day into my brain, time flies.  It gets away from me even as I am intentionally willing it to stand still.  I can't stop it.  I can't freeze it. I can't slow it down.  Holding my friend's newborn, it seemed like only yesterday that my little man was so tiny.  Yet as I watched him playing with the 18 month old, creating a soundtrack of their giggles in my brain, the clock was ticking.  A wise man named Kenny Chesney once sang, "Don't blink...You just might miss your babies growing like mine did...Trust me friend a hundred years goes faster than you think, so don't blink...life goes faster than you think...don't blink."

Obviously, I blinked.