Today, yes TODAY is my and my hubby’s 6 year anniversary.
I know 6 years isn’t a long time, but its the first anniversary where I don’t feel like we got married yesterday. I feel a few cobwebs when I retrieve the memories of our wedding now. And even though that makes me a little sad, all the life adventures we’ve been able to share, and especially our toddler-child bring me joy. I’ll trade the present joy for wedding memories with cobwebs any day.
Marriage advice, the not so good:
Of course when you get married, everyone loves to share marriage advice. Most of which is welcome, except when the advice is something along the lines of, “oh, you just wait until four years rolls around. Four years thats when it really gets tough. Mark my words. You’ll wake up one day and wonder, ‘Really? Is this my person?” Which is exactly what a stranger told me as a newly wed on a plane once.
The best marriage advice:
But the best marriage advice I’ve ever heard came from a patient’s husband. Anyone who works in healthcare knows that patients and their families can be quite remarkable. There’s something about being through trauma and pain that yields wisdom. Because of this, every now and then you as the healthcare provider actually end up being the most blessed by them, rather than the other way around. Its funny how that happens.
Surprisingly, though, this wasn’t one of my patients. My neighbor is a nurse who floats all over the hospital. This means she might be with cancer patients one day and organ transplant patients the next. Basically, she sees it all.
Because she and her husband have two kids and many toys Ray loves to go destroy their house after he has laid waste to ours, of course. One day we were over there when she came home from her 12 hour shift. I was asking her about her day when she said, “Oh, I heard something great today.” She continued, “anytime I have a couple who has been together forever, I always ask them, ‘what’s your secret?’” Because I wanna know, ya know? And today I got the best answer. This man, looked straight at me as his wife was lying in a coma and said, ‘my secret is that marriage isn’t 50/50. Sometimes, its 0/100.’”
At first, I was a little dismissive.
I mean, of course if your spouse is in a coma its going to be 0/100. But if they are alive and well, it should be 50/50. Right?
Wrong.
Heres the thing, I want marriage to be 50/50. My human nature screams “its not fair” if it isn’t. But the truth is, Biblically in marriage we are called to serve God by serving each other. There’s not a 50/50 stipulation attached, even when everyone is well. And while someone may have a Biblical reason to leave a marriage, doing more than a 50% is not one of them.
In 2018 year four came.
Of course, I remembered that stranger’s words. And the truth is year four was tough. But not because I was wondering if Cj was my person. It was because we had a 6 month old who didn’t subscribe to sleep at night and I had just accepted a full-time position with my medical sales company. My new position required travel, and the dynamics in our marriage shifted. CJ had to (and still does) do full-time dad and house duty while I am out. I was trying to exclusively breast feed, and work, and travel. I had to pump in my car. A LOT. Everywhere I went i had to tow plastic bottles and little tiny plastic pump pieces. I felt like some sort of strange vending machine. I am grateful (at least for now), this part is over. It was exhausting. There was a lot of coffee drinking and not a lot of sleep.
But we got through it. Now days our toddler child even believes in sleep most nights. Cj and I are in a constant text message thread of when I travel, verses when he travels and who is going to care for our dog and child. Thought all this, we try to give each other grace and we don’t keep percentage points.
To be clear, we don’t and haven’t always gotten it right. We get grumpy sometimes, we snap at each other sometimes and we mess up. But regardless, we are committed, 50/50, 25/75 or 0/100, because thats what we are called to.
What Marriage is About:
In conclusion, I will end with a quote from John Piper’s beautiful book, This Momentary Marriage.
“Marriage is not mainly about being or staying in love. It’s mainly about telling the truth with our lives. It’s about portraying something true about Jesus Christ and the way he relates to his people. It’s about showing in real life the glory of the gospel.”
Until next time, cheers!
P.S. If you want to read about one of my favorite adventures we had together, the time we left our toddler at home and went on a Disney cruise, click HERE.