We are talking of the future and business plans and all these topics that beckon anxiety from its hiding place, because we’re in such a precarious position with so many unknowns. He is asking for hope and trust and certainty, and I can’t give it in light of all those years when plans didn’t work out like we thought they would and disappointment came loping in like a stray dog. What if this new plan ends the same way all the others did?
His eyes, wild and furious, tell me I’ve said exactly the wrong words at exactly the wrong time in exactly the wrong way.
But there are children in the car, so he bites his lip and stares out the front window, and he will not be able to say what he wants to say until we get home and feed kids and put them down for their naps, because there is not a moment alone until we do.
We let the silence speak for us.
My head starts turning it over and over, how maybe I shouldn’t have said what I did, but, God, I’m so tired of arguing about the same old things and having the same old conversations about the same old dilemma. All those years adding up to tired brought words to my mouth without so much as a second thought. That’s not an excuse. Simply a reality. A confession, maybe.
You can’t take back words. So these words sit and fester in both our hearts, waiting for boys to sleep so we can fight the ugly wrinkles back into smooth.
///
It took him a while to convince me to spend the rest of my life with him. There were two other possibilities, a boy destined for politics and another for professional baseball, when he came along. My future husband came crashing through both their plans with his black curls and blue eyes and a voice that could soothe me into love when he talked, but especially when he sang.
The problem wasn’t that he was the tiniest bit dorky or that he wasn’t very good with money or that he wasn’t even sure what he wanted to be when he grew up. The problem was mostly that when he looked at me, he really looked at me. He really saw. He really knew in the deepest ways a person could know. It unsettled me. I was so good at hiding feelings and pretending that life’s hard punches hadn’t even winded me and constructing this identity of a laid-back girl who had her whole life figured out. I worked so hard to lock away those secret places. And here was a boy-man dismantling all the walls and staring into the bare places and shouting that what he saw—all the ugliness curled inside a little girl’s heart—was actually beautiful.
I wasn’t ready for that, and I wasn’t sure he was The One, and I couldn’t really tell if this was love or a timid kind of hope.
Mostly, though, I was afraid of the greatness he saw in me.
I held him at arms’ length for as long as I could, and then I crumbled. He slipped a ring on my finger, and we stepped into forever.
///
He still knows in the deepest ways a person can know. When I say there’s nothing wrong in that specific tone of voice, he knows it means there really is; I’m just not ready to talk about it yet. When I say I had a hard time writing today, he knows it’s because it’s the last day of the month and tomorrow I’ll have to sit in front of a computer and try to reconcile our budget. When I say I need to go to Wednesday night church, he knows it’s because I need time to myself, without anyone bothering me or trying to get my attention or asking me for something. He just knows.
He knows how I’ll respond or react before I do. He knows what I’m feeling before I can even articulate the words. He knows my motivations and my fears and my shaky hope and my annoying realism and the way I tie my shoes with two bunny ears and how I’ll feel about my son’s playground experience today and the words I’ll say about the one who won’t leave us alone at bedtime and what I think about the book I’ll pull open tonight.
Living together, scraping against each other’s edges, sharpening the iron strength of another for as long as we have, means that you really, really know someone in the deepest places. You know how they’re feeling and how they see the world today and what they need at just the right times. It can feel scary to be known this way. When we are known, we have no place to hide. When we are known, we are vulnerable.
When we know, we see all their vulnerable. This knowing can turn cruel, and sometimes it does, taking its anger-shot at the exact place it will hurt the most.
That’s all a part of the marriage story.
///
I had never met anyone quite like him before. When I was sick, he stayed by my side, holding my hair as I bent over the toilet or lying beside me while I burned up with fever or carrying me down fifteen stairs after I broke my foot.
When I spoke, he listened and heard. When I dreamed, he believed those dreams were possible. When I cried, he did not run away. When I raged, he met the fire.
For the early years of our marriage, I lived with a ball of black in my heart. It spoke of abandonment and fear and a bottomless well of insecurity. Sometimes that ball flew out of my mouth and wrapped around words. Sometimes it took off the screen door of my heart and nailed up a cedar one instead. Sometimes it aimed its arrow and sent hurt into my husband’s heart.
Every single time he forgave. He never held grudges or threatened leaving or wondered if he might do better for himself somewhere else. Instead, he stood solid against all those years until I began to soften. And then he loved me more tenderly, more profoundly, more wholly.
I have still never met anyone quite like him.
///
A fight like this one is not the first in the nearly twelve years we’ve been married. Of course it isn’t. Because we’re human. We’re imperfect. We’re selfish. We speak without thinking. And when you’ve been married this long, you know what all the words say, but you also learn what the silences between the words say.
In every marriage there come seasons of waking up on a different page in a different book, feeling more like strangers who fight than friends who talk. We have had days, weeks, months of tension and push-and-pull and butting heads and asking forgiveness, and every single time—every single time—we have walked out of that shaky season stronger than we walked in.
Every single time.
We fought and we disliked and we raged and we cried and we opened our umbrellas and we hid in ditches during the storms that sometimes only dumped rain but sometimes felt like a Category 5 tornado, and through it all we fought for love.
We all say words we don’t mean to the ones we love. And then we all have the privilege of stepping outside ourselves and meeting the other person’s hurt with humility and remorse.
The secret to saving a marriage is not avoiding all the conflicts. The secret is letting go of our pride. Saying we’re sorry. Choosing love over winning. Forgiving.
Sometimes, when we are entrenched in those days and weeks and months of conflict, when it feels like we can get nothing right and we can’t say a word without arguing, it can feel like conflict tells the whole story of our marriage. But if we look closely enough, we’ll see.
Forgiveness after forgiveness, this is the whole story of a marriage.
And so, today, while boys eat their lunch, I follow my husband up the stairs and I wrap my arms around him and speak my apology into his ear. Tears mix on both our cheeks, but that salty water is really sweet. So sweet.
Because it tells the real story of a marriage. The real story of partnership. The real story of love.
This is an excerpt from We Count it All Joy, a book of essays. For more of Rachel’s writings, visit her Reader Library page, where you can get a couple of books for free.
(Photo by Zoriana Stakhniv on Unsplash)
