my grandparents have a picture of them on the wall. they are young, handsome and without wrinkles in it. when it was taken they didn't have an idea that they will have 3 children ahead of them, that they will have great-grand children. they didn't know of all the ups and downs that their life together will bring and they didn't know how through all of it they will stay together until the end.
from what i observe, i think that now they are more in love than i have ever known them. after almost 55 years of marriage. they still bicker like you wouldn't believe but i catch little glimpses of love in their actions that words would never be big enough to describe.
in little over a month we will have lived 6 months as a husband and a wife. i was expecting the first year of hardships that people were telling me about. i was expecting adjustments and little annoyances and things unexpected. and the annoyances have come. he 'strongly dislikes' me chewing when i am next to him. i 'strongly dislike' him talking while i watch tv. and there are more, of course. but in the grand picture, let's admit, these just make life more interesting. nothing to sweat about and we both know it.
the other day i was talking to a boy i work with, he is about 21. i was telling him how neil and i met. he said that he doesn't think he'll ever get married because he doesn't think that he'll ever find a girl and trust her like that. all i could answer to him was that in my own experience, marriage is one of the best things that God has invented here on earth.
all the waiting, all the heart-breaks, crying on bobs shoulder after dates gone wrong, annoying my girlfriends of endless talks about "he did and he didn'ts" and all the other crap i went through and all the wanting to be with that someone for years were so worth to get my husband in the end.
but let's not turn this into another cheesy-lovey post written on almost-valentines day. i do have to say that more than anything else, it is so important to marry the right person. i suppose i risked it. we met (on the internet), dated, got engaged and married in almost year and a half. but i clung to God and trusted my gut. it turned out beautiful.
we are sharing our lives. i wonder how i will define love in another 10 years. a man i worked with once said that people often say that marriage is often 50/50. it's not true, he said. sometimes i have to give 90 and she gives 10, other times she gives 80 and i give 20. you can't draw a line and call it even - there is always giving and taking and you have to be flexible.
i think it's one of the best things i heard about marriage before we got married. this is where marrying the right person is so important - finding the man or woman, who will be willing to give without keeping the score and able to take when needed. that's what's been one of the lessons i've learned about marriage this far.
we don't have a portrait of us on the wall. i tend to give them all away. but we do have our website up for another few weeks before we take it off. i think the story is finally complete. including the wedding, honeymoon and others. that's our portrait of the beginning.
Our wedding website
3 comments:
this is, as most of your love/marriage thoughts are, a lovely post. we have now been married 8 months and haven't had the first-year hardships either. yes, there are little things - i can't stand him chewing near me, either! - but no one is perfect. we talk a lot about not being perfect, but being perfect for each other.
now that all of the crappy guys not really loving me and all that is so long ago i can't feel the hurt, i would say that i think going through that helped me figure out what i wanted and deserved. the end result is so much better than i'd hoped for or expected from any of those jerks and losers and just plain idiots.
this stuff about first year hardships makes me think of what our pianist for our wedding told us, something I'll never forget.
She said that their first year was definitely the hardest, but that they didn't know it at the time. At the time they thought it was wonderful and great and wondered what everyone was talking about when they say the first year is hard. But now, 8 years later, she said it's gotten so much better, so much more wonderful, that looking back the first year WAS the hardest.
I love that. I hope I can say the same thing in 8, 10, 50 years. It hasn't been hard for us either, I love learning all those little things.
i also think for a lot of people the first year is hardest not because of the relationship per se, but because most people just graduate college and get hitched and they're really young and everything is new. i'm really glad i had some time to do things on my own, if only to prove to myself that i could. and because we both came into the relationship stable - emotionally and financially.
Post a Comment