Marriage Is: A Beach

Something simple for the coming week, because the last week was long and did not include enough naps.

I grew up around the ocean. My family moved to Seattle (yes, actually Seattle, not some random suburb) the summer I turned 5 and we spent many sunny afternoons making sandcastles or skipping stones or being buried in the sand by my brothers s at Alki Beach. We visited other beaches, too--up on the coast of Washington, in Port Townsend, or sometimes we went to beaches in Oregon. I remember the lakes with less fondness. They were slimy and gross, and had too many sharp rocks. 

Now, it might be because I'm an introvert, or I've always had a poetic soul, or perhaps I just dreaded being pushed under the water by my brothers, but I preferred to sit in the water rather than swim. I did know how to swim, but I didn't want to. I wanted to sit, and I wanted my seat to be about a foot deep so I could be fully submerged but also feel the sandy shore. I liked to watch the water coming in and going out, I liked to feel the waves move around my body. I think I knew it felt peaceful, even though I couldn't yet appreciate peaceful things.

These days I am stuck in Illinois, and there is no ocean. There is a lake. It's not horrible. 

My husband and I have been to the beach just twice this summer. The most recent trip was about a month ago, for our anniversary. We went at night so we could light some flying lanterns (so cool!) and watch them sail out to sea. Well... sail out to lake. (And, for the record, they didn't sail out to the lake because it was incredibly windy so they probably sailed out to the train tracks. In case you're wondering, they're biodegradable, and the entire thing burns up so if you were worried about some innocent person getting attacked by a wilted lantern, don't. Not possible.) Anyways. We lit three lanterns in honor of three years of marriage, and we would have stayed for a while except the beach closes at 9 o'clock. Joey would have been happy to hang around until the stars came out.

But my favorite time to be at the beach is in the morning. So back in May we went and watched the sunrise. We woke up at 4 o'clock, despite the husband's whining, and it was absolutely breathtaking (see photo above for proof...). He wanted to leave after about five minutes, but I just wanted to sit. And so I did.

One of the reasons I love the beach so much is because it's two completely different things that make one beautiful thing. You have the water, which may be fresh or salty or have lots of goose poop in it, but it's definitely water. And then you have the shore, which could be made of dirt or sand or just rocks. You put them together and BAM you have a beach. 

It's that simple. They are so unlike each other, sand and water. At deeper levels, they're both complicated. Sand is made out of the tiniest particles of shell and glass and rock. And that water, well it could be full of sea creatures and sunken ships, or maybe it's just a lake with lots of goose poop. 

Marriage is like a beach. I know I keep making this analogy, about two completely separate things that turn into one thing, but that's really the nitty gritty truth of marriage. You take one man and one woman, you put them together and as a unit they become infinitely more awesome than they ever were apart. How fantastic is that? And how fantastic is it that a beach is just water and sand? 

Another important way beaches and marriages are similar is that they move. Tides of peace go out, a wave of conflict comes in. The water washes a dead fish onto the shore and then the poor sand has to deal with it. It ebbs and flows with life's changes. The sand can be too hot, the water too cold. In marriage we change as a couple, but people do still change separately--it's sad to think that for this reason people sometimes get divorced. The challenge is not how to "deal with" or "fix" the change, but how to respond in a way that is loving, and accepting. (Unless that change involves someone becoming a drug addict or getting bitten by a spider and developing super powers. You have to fix/deal with that.) Beyond time, beyond impending differences, the water and shore know that they belong together. They know their relationship is infinite, and so they make it work.

How often do we forget that some of the most surreal and heartstopping things in life are not complicated? Some things just come together simply... naturally... and I find that incredible.

Marriage Is: A Tent

I've been thinking recently about the words we use to define marriage. This blog series has allowed me to do that more freely, because I am dedicating real time, during real life, using my real marriage as a context in which to write this. We expect marriage to be so many things, and it is rarely any of those things all of the time--or sometimes it is none of those things, ever. We want it to be beautiful, but instead it's confusing. We want it to be glamorous, but instead it's messy. We want it to be interesting, and fun, and easy, but instead it's predictable and practical and--hard. 

And that's where people tend to lose interest--those sorts of words can cause people to disengage with things much less important than marriage. There is nothing romantic about messy, practical, or hard. Gosh, aren't those BAD things? Isn't it BAD for things to be hard?

If you think I'm making fun of you... I am. 

It is a childish perspective to believe that saying something is hard or difficult also means it is bad, or has some sort of negative aura. There are children I tutor several times a week, and at the end of each segment of the lesson I ask them their opinion about that particular assignment. "Was that easy, okay, or hard?" Most of the kids say "easy" 99.9999999% of the time. But occasionally a student says it was "hard." You might expect that these are the kids with dyslexia, or who come for lessons at 9am, but you're wrong. The kids who say things were hard are always my most academically-inclined students. When I ask them why it was hard, they tell me it was because they mispronounced "appropriate" once, or accidentally did problem #8 instead of #4 because they lost their place. I am not exaggerating. These students will get all of the answers correct, I will praise them for good work, offer encouragement when they get confused, and STILL if there was one slip up the entire process was "hard." They automatically connect "bad" things with the word "hard."

Isn't it silly to think that just because something is imperfect, it's difficult? And isn't is also silly to think that just because we say something is difficult, it's bad? And, to take it a step further, isn't it also completely ridiculous to think that just because something is easy, it's good?

There are plenty of hard things in life. Baking a pie, learning to ride a bike, driving in Chicago, making a tent, going to college, organizing paperwork, bathing your dog in a small bathroom, or being married. These are all things I actually quite enjoy, and they are difficult in varying ways, but today I am only going to talk about about two of them.

Today's topic! Marriage Is: A Tent.

I went camping this week, for the first time since my honeymoon (yep, we did that!) and man, was it fun. But it certainly wasn't easy! In fact, you might say it was pretty difficult. Some parts more difficult than others but for the majority of the trip it was all heartwarming difficulty with my best friend. 

First we organized our campsite by moving the picnic table and deciding on a good spot for the tent. Then we unloaded the car, and began putting up the tent. If you've never put up a tent before, you are seriously missing out. Maybe for some people this is a stressful experience, but for me, the work is very rewarding. (It would be more rewarding, except Joey likes to do a lot of it himself because it's manly, or something.)

So we dump the tent out of the bag, and for the next 20 minutes or so worked together to get it standing, get all the poles in the right place, and then we stood inside it to appreciate our efforts. Not a big deal, right? How the heck is marriage a tent? Where am I going with all of this? I'll be brief, this time. Promise.

1. You need 2 people to put up a tent. Sometimes you need more, if it's a bigger tent. During youth group retreats, we used to have these gigantic army tents. It took upwards of 10 people to get them up. A big tent like that can't be raised efficiently with just one set of hands. You've got to hold a stake here, stretch the canvas there, pull that pole this way. Marriages also need 2 people. You can't make one all by yourself--that's just weird.

2. Sometimes, you just have to trust the other person, even if they don't make sense. Joey is much more of a "tent expert" than I am. However, I am pretty quick at figuring things out, and I get a little thrill by figuring them out on the way. And yet, when he asked me to come hold a part of the tent or push something or find a velcro strap, I didn't argue. I just did it, because he was trying to build something with me, and if we both tried to put up the same tent separately, we would be intensely frustrated. In the same way, sometimes your spouse is going to ask you to do something that makes no sense, or something that you don't feel like doing. You might not want to take the trash out, or change a diaper, or get up in the middle of the night to make sure the front door is locked. But these are all important things, even if they don't seem like it.

3. Be patient. There are two people trying to do the same thing--but they can't read each other's minds. If that bungee cord snaps you in the face, it's probably not because your spouse was trying to give you a cool scar. In marriage, you will likely get hurt and assume someone did something on purpose--but they didn't! Don't jump to conclusions. Ask questions. Talk it out. Don't rush through the communication process.

4. When your tent is done, you now have a place of protection. You step inside, you zip up the door, and you are safe from the rain, sun, and raccoons. When you build a marriage together, if you've put all the parts together correctly, you have a place to come to when you need protection, or rest. 

Building the tent wasn't easy. It was hard. We bought this tent at a thrift store for $20 just a few months ago, so we'd never put it up before. I had to ask Joey to vanquish a few spiders. The pole for the door overhang kept coming undone. The canvas on top had all these tangled cords when we took it out of the bag. The whole process was difficult. But I loved it, and it was worth it. 

It was hard--harder than usual because it wasn't our old tent. But it wasn't bad. I don't look back on it and think, Well, I hope I never have to do that again.

Marriage is hard. It's hard because you have to step outside yourself every single day and love this other person with your whole soul. You have to deal with them rolling onto your hair while you sleep (Seriously, that hurts!) and not instincually punch them in the face because you're not quite awake. You have to remember to put the toilet seat down so your wife doesn't fall in (this is also a major catastrophe.) You have to make a very organized schedule because you share a car. You have to do so many things, and do them on purpose, and you have to say so many things on purpose (and purposefully apologize for the accidental things.) And it should be that way. Loving someone the right way should come naturally, because you love them and want what's best for them, but it should also require effort, intensity, and it should be intentional. 

I love my husband. My love for him comes second only to my love for God. He is my entire world. Loving him is not always easy, always fun, always glamorous. But it is always good, because God is love, and HE is good. 

Putting up a tent does not happen by accident. Building a marriage does not happen by accident. Love--the action, not the emotion--does not happen by accident. It's hard work. But it's GOOD.

**You may have noticed I'm not writing about singleness this week. But it's not hard to figure out. Singleness is a tent too... it's just smaller! Or, it's a huge tent for a big group of people. Then you have lots of hands. Either way, I find building a tent is incredible. : )