Fighting for it

Time has escaped me yet again.  Eight years since the day we made the choice to commit to each other.

Oh where has that time gone?

As I take a look back on the years I am reminded of the beautiful gift of grace.

Grace: (in Christian belief) the free and unmerited favor of God, as manifested in the salvation of sinners and the bestowal of blessings.

Eight years ago we leaped into a journey together that has been filled with great joys, deep sorrows, celebrations, disappointments, and so much more.

My plans for our marriage were big and bold.  I wanted to be the perfect wife.  You see I really convinced myself this could exist and I was determined to figure out how. Growing up in a broken home and continually watching my mom search for love left me thinking that I had to have something better because what I experienced could not be all there was.

I had found my love in Dan and I was not going to allow it to slip away. 

He was perfect in my eyes. 

Everything I never had growing up.

He was functional.

I was dysfunctional.

He was safe when life seemed so unsafe.

As time hurled itself at us we began to experience heartbreaks that were never in our plan.  My mom was battling an intense addiction that was sucking the life out of me and my marriage.  In the midst of this dark time we lost our first baby.  The days grew darker as we tried our best to hold up to this image we both wanted.  As time passed I tried my hardest to still be the perfect wife, all the while I was dying a slow death inside.  Dan did what he could to make me happy.  He tried to take the pain away or avoid it some days, but it wouldn’t go away.  I remember sitting at the dinner table together feeling so empty and anxious wondering if this is what I had amounted to. 

But I did what I thought was best and stuffed the pain and disappointments.  I pressed on with a smile hoping people wouldn’t see the disaster that was beginning to unravel in our marriage behind closed doors.

Days and months continued on as they do.  Our lives growing and intertwining together as we experienced great joys {the births of our daughters, celebrations of life, time together, watching our girls grow, dreaming up dreams of the future} and great sorrows {Infertility, death of loved ones, addictions of loved ones spiraling out of control, dreams that seemed so unachievable, depression, anxiety, and empty promises that left us aching}.

We loved each other.  We really did a good job at trying to fulfill what we thought each other needed.  The best part is we had most of our friends and family fooled into thinking we had it all together.

We began coexisting. 
I felt disconnected and unloved. 
He felt pushed away and disrespected.

We got really good at neglecting our marriage and yet making ourselves believe we were putting our best effort forward.

The breaking point came on a drizzly October day last year.  How did we let it get this far.

Life has a way of catching up to you and reminding you of how broken you are.

Nothing could take the love we had for each other, but we had allowed the hurt and disappointment to wrap tightly into every wound.

Who knew you could love each other so much yet hurt each other so deeply.

I think back to the beginning.  We both brought suitcases upon suitcases of baggage into our marriage.  How can you not.  My home life growing up might have looked more dysfunctional from the outside than Dan’s home life, but we all take away bad habits and learned behaviors in to our marriages.  Dan was not excluded from this but for some reason I set him on a pedestal thinking he was.

We both wanted God to heal our marriage in supernatural ways.  If we pray hard enough, if I read enough Christian self-help books, if I loved him with all the right love languages we could fix our marriage and poof we would be fabulous.  Do I believe God heals in supernatural ways?  Of course I do.  But it didn’t happen the way we wanted it to.  I see so many relationships/marriages that use this excuse not to go get help because they believe God will heal everything with time.  Why can I say this?  That was our outlook in our marriage for years.

On the opposite spectrum we can numb the pain to a point where we don’t even see how disconnected we have become to each other.

Getting help was the hardest decision we decided together.  It was almost as if we had to mourn a loss.  We both have this gene that tells us we can fix it and we can do it all. 

But we couldn’t fix our marriage.

We needed help.

Did we believe God was healing us in the midst of this?  Yes.  But we needed the help of a trained professional.

Some of us want to be right more than we want to be better.  ~Freeway~

We opened old and new wounds, reminisced over the beauty our lives have created, pulled and tugged on painful memories of our childhood.  We learned what communication could look like.  What realistic expectations look like for us individually and our marriage. 

We had to allow ourselves to go find those suitcases of baggage we brought into our marriage but neglected to unpack and begin to sort through them separately and together.  Dan and I had to allow each other into the areas that hurt, the broken areas that we tried so hard to conceal.  We had to stop being each others God and begin to find approval in our Savior.  For me this was huge.  My self-worth was put into all the wrong areas.  My need for approval was at an unhealthy level.

As I began to take that pressure off myself and Dan I started to see clearer and experience love at a deeper level.  I allowed myself to see our marriage in the present rather than continually dreaming of what I felt it should be. 

We have been in marriage counseling together for almost nine months now and we are still learning and growing and allowing God to stretch our marriage.  It has been hard and it has been absolutely amazing.

We never thought we would be that couple that needed outside help.  Those people are weak minded and don’t trust God…..I almost looked down on them.  Well we became one of those couples and it is changing our marriage.

Eight years.

I have learned that pain in inevitable.  I know now that I can allow it in my marriage instead of continually running away from it. 

I have learned that my husband will never be able to rescue me from all the pain.  Only my Savior can do that. 

We are in this together, pressing forward with the same goal in mind.

We can learn how to walk together with ALL our brokenness and find our silver lining.
Day by day we learn to become real with each other in the moments of chaos and disappointment.  Rejoice together in the joys and achievements.  Yearning for the day we will become fully known.

The truth is:  If we are allowing ourselves to be vulnerable to each other we are going to get hurt.  But we can’t allow this to be an excuse to disconnect from one another and continue on as if nothing is going on inside.  It is SO worth it to be IN love and not just say you love.

I am so thankful for eight years.  I am more in love with my husband today than ever before.  I see our marriage more clearly now.  Learning to live in the moment- when it feels like it completely sucks and it feels the best ever.  We are teaching our girls what a healthy marriage can look like. We are allowing vulnerability, grace and humility to ebb and flow through every wound, joy and moment we walk through.

It has been a beautiful eight years and I am so blessed to walk this life with my husband, my love.

Love never gives up. Love cares more for others than for self.  Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have.
Love doesn’t strut, Doesn’t have a swelled head, Doesn’t force itself on others, Isn’t always “me first,” Doesn’t fly off the handle, Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others, Doesn’t revel when others grovel,
Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth, Puts up with anything, Trusts God always, Always looks for the best, Never looks back, But keeps going to the end.  

                                                    ~ 1 Corinthians 1, The Message~