A Touchpoint True Story About Being Married
On this day sixteen years ago, my wife and I got married.
The ceremony was held at Rehoboth Baptist Church in Tucker, Georgia,
and roughly 11 billion people attended. The service itself was too long,
our limo got stuck in traffic on the way to pick us up, and we were so
emotionally drained after everything was over that we spent most of our
honeymoon floating in a pool in Mexico.
I
didn’t know what I was getting into at the time, and neither did
Rachel. That’s the thing about marriage — you really don’t know what
you’re doing. You sort of stumble into it with good intentions and big
dreams only to discover that it ain’t as easy as it seems.
That’s the first lesson of marriage: there’s a learning curve.
There’s the obvious stuff, like learning about their personal habits,
their idiosyncrasies and unconfessed secrets. But there’s the stuff that
isn’t so obvious, like learning how to love the other person.
Not
just be in love with them, not just say you love them, but truly,
deeply love them. To help them or counsel them, to give them courage and
hope and a shoulder to cry on when they need it. These are big things,
and sometimes they come at a price to you. But that’s okay.
Because to love someone unconditionally is to open yourself up to being hurt.
I’ve done things that hurt Rachel, and she’s done things that hurt me.
Some were heat of the moment things and some we didn’t even realize we
did, but after every hurt, we circled back around and talked about it.
Sometimes, that led to deeper pain.
But
it always resulted in our loving one another more, because out of that
hurt came two things: an awareness and a desire to do better.
Unconditional love excises selfishness from your soul.
It puts someone else in pride of place, which means you have to learn
to sublimate your ego. It can be things as simple as changing your
eating habits to include actual vegetables, or as difficult as giving
yourself the freedom to laugh at life.
Rachel
has taught me to take risks, to bet on myself, to trust God when He
calls for a leap of faith. I’ve taught her to like comic book movies and
given her permission to hone her sense of humor.
So, yeah. It’s a push.
I’ve learned complacency is the enemy of relationships.
We are not the same people we were on June 16, 2001. A lot of things
have flowed under and over the bridge, and we’ve done stuff we didn’t
want to do, but we’ve also paid attention to the ever-changing tides and
made the decision to try and get ahead of life whenever possible.
That
often puts us at odds with some of the folks we care about, but we’ve
learned to navigate those times. It’s never easy, but we know we have to
keep growing, keep stretching, keep reaching for that greater something
we know God is drawing us toward.
Another lesson I’ve learned is that you don’t grow without resistance.
If nothing is pushing back on you, you don’t develop strength. In 16
years we’ve changed homes, changed jobs, and changed our theology; we’ve birthed and buried a daughter;
we’ve birthed and are raising a daughter and a son. I know that’s just
the way life goes for all of us, but when you’re also constantly trying
to grow and change and mature, it wears on you a bit. You start to
wonder if you aren’t better off coasting instead.
You
start to wonder if maybe you’re the problem. That’s what the voices in
my head keep telling me — that our insistence on growing and changing
and living life better is our choice, and we have to answer for the
consequences. Meanwhile, our faith tells us that growth is the outflow
of faith, and the momentary consequences are nothing compared to the
bigger picture.
It
makes things tough sometimes. Somedays I wake up tired for no reason
whatsoever; it’s only then that I realize the mileage we’re putting on
our souls, miles that will make us better, stronger people in the long
run.
That’s why laughter is so important to us — we’ve learned to laugh at life’s absurdities. To spend time with us is to spend time unleashing a chuckle or two.
We’ve
learned to laugh by watching our children, by listening to their
observations, and by getting on the floor and being kids with them for a
while. We’ve learned that fart jokes are incessantly funny, that
strange voices add light to any situation, and that a well-timed
sardonic observation can turn a moment into a memory.
It’s part of who we are, and while we laugh together as much as we can, we’re also learning not to laugh at one another. Giggles should build, not destroy.
And
maybe that’s really the biggest lesson I’ve learned: marriage is about
building one another, becoming stronger and wiser together. It took me a long time to realize I had more than a spouse, I had a partner. And a damn fine partner at that.
Sixteen
years of marriage, and there’s no other person on the planet that I
love more than Rachel. I see her in the faces of our children, I hear
her in my head when I’m thinking my way through a situation, and she’s
the person I want to spend time with every single day.
We
celebrated earlier in the week while our kids were on a trip with my
parents, and even after 16 years I still learned new things about her.
Sitting across the table from her, I saw her beauty, her strength, her
humility and grace, and I thought:
I am a blessed man. For sixteen years, and God-willing, for sixty more.
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