When I was a young mom with several children, I remember earnestly going to an older mom who looked like she had her act together and asking how she did it. I recall getting a vague blank look in return with the unsatisfactory reply, ” I don’t know.
You don’t know! How can you not know? I was being denied. Or at least I thought so at the time.
This week, Gary and I will celebrate our 37th wedding anniversary. After 37 years, I know this: I am not sure how we got here or how we made it this far. And honestly, I don’t know if this far has any meaning except that we still love God and each other.
In a letter from prison, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote to a young couple. Today, you are young and very much in love, and you think your love can sustain your marriage. It can’t. Let your marriage sustain your love.
Let your marriage sustain your love.
How can my marriage sustain love?
On reflection of 37 years, two thoughts come to mind about what sustains two people living in marriage.
Reform myself.
Catherine Doherty was a Catholic social activist and spiritual mother to priests and laity. She wrote to Thomas Merton, “You have only one person to reform, and that is you. Then enters the supernatural. When one does the work on oneself first with only one thought in mind: to love God and transform our own soul, well then, God enters into the picture and somehow brings other souls to us.”
While she talks about how communities are built, I think this applies to marriage, the seed of family community. I have only one person to reform, and that is myself.
What is God’s call on my life? Keep first things first, which for me has meant regularly removing myself from the hurried pursuit of daily living and finding stretches of silence, stillness, and solitude.
Reform myself. It is out of my intimate relationship with God that the rest flows.
Radical acceptance of the other.
The learning lab for radical acceptance started first with my adult children. These relationships helped me recognize the small pockets of numb tolerance I gave Gary. These are places where I neither turned away nor turned to Gary, somehow thinking there exists any neutrality in intimacy.
Every choice of thought, word, or deed is a turning. Who will I turn to? Where will I turn to? What will I turn to?
Even after 37 years, I still choose to turn to Gary. This means giving my full listening, nonjudgemental presence when he speaks and asking with interest about his interests. These choices are moment-driven, mostly mutual, and modest in minute steps.
How can I say I don’t know how we got here, even with what I shared above? Even with all that, it isn’t all there is. There is still plenty of mystery, plenty of grace, and a whole raft of people walking alongside us over the years.
One day, someone young may approach me and ask how I stayed married for so many years – I am afraid I would return a vacant stare and have to reply – I am not sure how we got here.
Beautifully said! Nothing in there about expecting the other person to meet your needs or make you happy. Nothing about it being 50/50. It all starts with me and the transformation in my own heart. Thanks for stating it so clearly – as always.
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