23 years and half my life

 23 years ago today I woke up and felt miserable - I think I had vomitted in the night and I phoned Sam first thing in the morning. "I don't think I can get married today," I said. This was, of course, disheartening to him. But I gingerly drank some weak tea, handed my Dad a folded up plastic bag to keep in his pocket while he walked me down the aisle, and proceeded to prepare for our wedding later that day. It was Easter Sunday - a day full of hope, joy, and resurrection celebration. Maybe I was hoping that Easter would represent our marriage - the resurrection power of Christ infused into our union. Easter is a day of hope fulfilled, faith becoming sight, the unbelievable becoming real.

That's essentially what I felt marriage was going to be. 

And I don't intend to dampen the romantic notions I had but I must say, these were indeed, romantic sentiments. Marriage has turned out to be gritty, challenging, (rewarding, yes!), hard work, stretching, painful, on the negative side. On the positive side, instead of listing descriptors like 'joyful' and 'life-giving' (um...5 lives, in fact!), let me take each of the negative descriptors and give why I can be grateful for each of these:

Gritty.

Friction...like grit under the skin. How is this in any way positive? Let's ask the oyster who endures grit, rolling it around in the ocean's gentle, and sometimes violent waves. Let's ask how the grit becomes a thing of beauty. Yes, I believe the grit of marriage has yielded its pearls for me. 

Challenging.

Marriage for us has been challenging. We both brought our hard heads into this. And we have challenged each other and from these challenges has come growth, deepening dependence on the Lord, greater awareness and understanding of each other (and society in general, by extension), and greater love for each other as we endure the challenges of trying to see eye-to-eye. We have had to learn how to build a marriage including the challenges, in spite of the challenges and FOR the challenges we have faced together. 

Hard Work.

Marriage is not a walk in the park. I imagine for some it might be. I hope you have the picnic idyllic marriage life. It just hasn't been that for us. Sam and I, for all we had in common, had a whole lot NOT in common. Sam is an engineer. I'm a....(what am I? think, think, think...) free spirit?! Writer, kind of? Sam grew up in rural Zambia. I grew up in Hong Kong (albeit in a village on a mountain). Our cultural, family styles were extremely different. Sam's family was more reserved, polite, British, proper. My family was more casual, expressive, informal, and emotionally charged. Sam had never seen his parents have an argument (!) I had lived with conflict rampant in our home from day one. These dynamics take a lot to work through and patience to endure our differences. 

Stretching.

Marriage has meant I've had to grow in selflessness. I've had to stretch in ways that felt difficult and uncomfortable. When I stretch physically, I feel a strain and discomfort, and I hold the stretch, allowing for a measure of discomfort so that I can prevent a backache in the future. Marriage has demanded that I stretch myself to consider others' needs and desires (because we also have children thrown into the mix :D). I'm still being stretched. It's still uncomfortable. And some of the stretching is also in finding ways to meet my own needs - not merely to consider myself a 'need-meeter' - a fixation of the household to support everyone, but also a member with particular and significant needs. It is stretching for me to admit I have needs, and to advocate for meeting my own needs is its own kind of stretch. Often Christian marriage commentary focuses so much on everyone becoming more selfless and trying to be better, do better, be more humble, more serving, more giving. I think I tried that, a lot. I never succeeded much. It's still good to try in these things, but it feels like so much striving, when God has given us everything we need for life and godliness. I think the secret is less in the striving and more in the abiding, but don't quote me on it, or I might be labeled a heretic. (Oh well).

Painful.

Yes, marriage has been painful. Both for the ways I've been hurt and the ways I've dished out the hurting. It has been frustrating and lonely at times. It's a myth that marriage ends loneliness. Marriage can be, and often is, one of the loneliest states of being. A single person can hope for or look for a mate and hope for the ending of loneliness. Loneliness in marriage is a very common and hidden, under-expressed reality. I have been lonely in my marriage for many seasons. Sam has also lived through many times of loneliness. It isn't that we weren't there for each other - we were. But so many misunderstandings, perspectives that were warped, or even unwillingness to express our loneliness or need, kept us from companioning each other. 

And for all these things, I'm thankful. I'm thankful that God saw fit to bring Sam and I together - even if it came about in such a violent, gut-wrenching, traumatic way. I'm thankful that God sovereignly orchestrated our lives to meet and that Sam actually wanted to marry me. I'm grateful that even in my traumatized state I was able to think clearly enough to pursue getting married, even with the turbulent path those 6 months of engagement took. 

23 years ago I was 23 - half the age I am now. And today, on the 23rd of April, we celebrate our 'golden' anniversary (not the 50 year Golden), and maybe the overcoming of the adolescence of our marriage. I told Sam when we got married that I'd give it a try for 50 years, and then re-evaluate. At this point, I only have 27 years to go!