Beauty on the Backroads

Stories of grace for life's unexpected turns

Marriage

A story of us

The hanging flower basket sways in the wind on this rainy morning, its blooms all but invisible. The purple and green leaves are struggling for life because of neglect. Watering the plants wintering inside the house is not one of my strong suits, so I feel a bit responsible for this, especially because of the plant’s significance.

I remember the day we picked it out, a tangible memory of the weekend we spent picking up the pieces of what was left of our marriage, seeing if we could put it back together again. It was my first time away from our youngest, still a baby at the time, but we were only a couple of hours away and both of the kids were in good hands. It wasn’t even a question, this time away, even if we couldn’t afford it with time or money.

We stood in the gift shop of the conservatory where the colors and smells had revived something inside of us in the dead of a Midwest winter. We didn’t need a knick-knack to commemorate our time. We needed a living memorial. The wandering jew caught our eye, although the name still sounds odd on my tongue. (Its official name: Tradescantia zebrina. Also a mouthful.)

That particular plant actually died years ago, but we replaced it with one that was discounted at Lowe’s. It thrived. And now it’s struggling again so it might be time to purchase another one.

I used to feel guilty about this inability to keep the same plant alive. As a metaphor for our marriage, I thought maybe it was a sign that we were destined to not make it as a couple. I’m over that now because what we’ve experienced is a continual process of planting and uprooting; of dying and thriving. The symbolism of the plant is as true when it is struggling for life as when it is thriving.

Our marriage has had those seasons, too.

Today, it’s been 10 years since the church filled with people and I donned that white dress to meet you in the sanctuary in your pink suit. Certain memories of that day will never leave me. But sometimes it seems like someone else’s life. Was that really us? (I feel the same way when I look at our engagement pictures, the last professional pictures we had taken together. Who are those people?)

It was us.

And so were all the other us-es from then till now.

Sometimes I want to toss out the uglier moments, but like the plant hanging on our porch, I come back to our marriage again and again, even if it often feels like something entirely different from what it once was. Its very existence reminds me of all the struggling and the thriving and the beauty that’s worth the result of having both.

I used to feel sad and a little bitter when I looked at pictures of younger us. I would feel sorry for them and their ignorance of the things to come. But now I know that we couldn’t be “us” now without “us” then and there are things we will face in the next 10 years that will contribute to future “us.”

I used to write these anniversary posts hoping to impart some wisdom about marriage, to celebrate and memorialize the years. I’ve never been the mushy type though I do love a good love story and to be honest, ours is my favorite. Even with all the times our union struggled for life. I’m not sure I would like us as much without all the hard stuff we’ve endured and overcome and are still overcoming.

I have no great wisdom just a lot more to learn.

And a grateful heart for where we happen to be right now, in a place of thriving. (We have known long seasons of near-death, though. I keep bringing it up because I want you to see more than appearances. We have smiled in pictures when there was no love in our hearts, celebrated our marriage while hiding hard truths.)

I still don’t understand how 10 years can feel like the longest stretch and a blink at the same time. That might be the only thing that really scares me about the future. How in 10 more years I’ll wonder how it was possible that so much time had passed.

Maybe 10 years is still too little time to really know what marriage is like but it feels as if we’ve crossed a milestone.  And all that we’ve endured propels me toward the next milestone.

Marriage is no sprint. It’s a marathon.

I’m glad we’re running together.

How I thought it would be

I had a birthday last week, my 39th. I remember when I turned 29 and then 30, I had this sort of desperate feel to my life. At 29, I was three weeks away from getting married. At 30, I had an almost-two-month-old. These were monumental, life-goal type of events, and I remember feeling like once I hit 30, that was it. Life was over. I was officially old.

Annie Spratt via Unsplash

Almost 10 years later, I laugh at my younger thoughts. At 29, I wanted to cling to my 20s, or the thought of them. They were full of fun and friends and discovery and adventure. For a few years, I would not admit to my real age. I was 29 plus one or something like that.

Now that my 30s are almost behind me, I’m mostly relieved to have survived them. Motherhood to two kids 20 months apart might have been the thing that broke me all on its own but the last decade also saw our marriage crack straight to the center and we’ve spent years repairing the rift. There was grad school (for my husband) and the letting go of what we thought our life might be. There was financial struggle and a move. And while I wouldn’t call our life stable yet (will it ever be?) I don’t feel the same kind of desperation I did back then.

Bear in mind, my life is not really what I thought it would be at 39. I thought we would have our own house by now. I thought I would be some kind of “success” or that as a couple at least one of us would be working in a profession for which we earned degrees. I thought I would feel more like I had it all together. I thought the feeling of desperation, of clinging to the past, to the life I once had, would overwhelm me. I thought maybe I’d have some kind of mid-life crisis. I thought life would be more like the middle-class American dream.

And it’s not that my life doesn’t bear some resemblance to some of those things, but if I told my 29-year-old self what the 39-year-old version of herself would be, she have laughed and dismissed me as a lunatic.

At 39, I know better who I am and what I want, even if it doesn’t make a lot of sense. I’m not longing for the good old days of my 30s because they weren’t all that good. I know I’ll have challenges in the next 10 years (by the time I’m 49, my oldest could be in college–what?!) but all I feel is free and sure and accepting. Yes, there are times I still wish we had a house of our own, that we could measure our success by our professional lives, that our life didn’t sometimes look like failure when compared to others our age.

But I’m not sorry for who I am now, even if I do feel a bit like a late bloomer. At 39, I feel rich in the things that matter most: friends and family, purpose and passion. I ran 1.8 miles on my 39th birthday and I’m prepping for a 5K with my daughter. It is one evidence of health. If you could see inside my mind, there would be a change there, too.

I no longer fear 40. I don’t want to put too much pressure on myself, but I want to make a sort of wish list for my next decade: the things I’d like to do, see, experience, become. Not a bucket list, necessarily, but something that gives some intentionality to my 40s. I feel like my 30s happened to me and I spent a lot of time reacting and playing catchup. I want to set the tone for my 40s. I know I can’t control everything that will happen to me in the next decade and that’s not exactly what I mean. It’s just that I feel more capable of saying ahead of time: This is how I’m going to be, this is the direction I’m going to keep moving, no matter what happens.

Sebastian Molineras via Unsplash

My 30s felt like clawing my way up a hill I desperately wanted to climb only to find myself back at the bottom. The last 10 years drained me mentally, emotionally, physically and at times, I didn’t want to attempt the climb again.

Not so now. In my 40s, I don’t want to see falling as failure, setbacks as stop signs. I want to dig deep and find the grit I know I’ve got inside of me. To give myself grace when things don’t work out like I planned. To look around at the beauty of the moment, even if I’m stuck on a proverbial hillside and the top seems so far away.

Life doesn’t feel as much like a race anymore. It’s more like a stroll. I want to fill my days with beauty and meaning, even if I’m doing things I don’t like. (I’m looking at you housework.)

In my 30s, I thought I had to accomplish a lot of stuff to matter in the world.

Now, I see that my very existence matters in the world, and I want my life to reflect that. I don’t have to get somewhere in life to make a difference. I can make a difference right here, right now. (And making a difference might not look like much. Maybe no one will even notice.)

And I could be wrong about all of it. Maybe my 40s won’t be what I thought. Still, I feel more prepared than ever to face the uncertainties and maybe even welcome the surprises.