marriage::

(April 28th this year will mark our 10 year anniversary).

A blog post on marriage won the poll.  I always struggle with a topic, so I have craftily delegated that responsibility to you.  I don’t pretend that you actually care, but help a brother out and vote.  It’s relatively painless.

Ginny & I were plunged into the waters of matrimony on a warmish day in April with our feet firmly planted on the lawn of a plantation home in Mississippi.  I refer to feet because it felt as though I floated through the day, weightless with a giddy type of joy that I tried to hide in order to appear mature to all the family and friends that had traveled to witness that everyday, subtle miracle when two become one.  We left in a convertible headed to Jackson, looking back to smile at our parents and friends as we left the revelry behind with our former lives.

We were too young, and I could have correctly been accused of a naivety to exponential proportion.  Ginny was halfway through her 21st year when we married, but she had been newly 21 when we applied for our marriage license at the dank and dusty official offices of the state.  I remember being taken aback at the discovery that she was just days passed the marker whereby we did not need her parents written approval to get married.  But we were hell-bent on making a life of our own together and there is no logic of the mind that can unravel the determinations of the heart.

Money was sparse and we had no place to live.  But these small details were on hold as we did know that after our honeymoon in Seattle & Vancouver, we were headed to work at a summer camp for the first three months of our marriage.  I am fairly certain that no pre-marriage counselor would have endorsed an opening chapter to marriage whereby we got about 3 days together a month, and the rest of our time was spent running around from 7am to midnight teaching 250 kids how to water ski or string a bow.

The truth is, we sailed through our first five years of marriage.  Not to say we didn’t have the inherent friction of forcing two lives together:  she learned to how to be more of a mouse than a tornado on the mornings that she left to be at the bakery at 5am.  I learned that my words could hurt her and how to soften them so that she could actually hear what I was meaning to say.  But it was fun and good and our love was healthy and growing.

Then came our son.  And his time with us, bonded us closer together as we pursued a goal of loving him and providing for his life as best we could.  And we made a damn good team, going places together we could never have made it through alone.

But with his absence, it seemed that the good in our marriage had been taken along with him.  I vividly remember the conversation whereby I voiced what we both knew to be true: “our marriage is no longer fun”.  And when all you want is to make the pain of your favorite person a little lighter, it seems that all you do instead is add a brick.

And the grace of God during this low time, looked like this:  we never entertained the idea that it would be easier apart. The same conversation that admitted that our marriage could no longer be described as “fun”, continued on as we reminded one another of the commitment that we made on that day in Mississippi- when we were definitely too young and could never have imagined being where we now found ourselves.

Slowly and in measure unperceived by the eye of man, our marriage arose from the ashes.  We are keenly aware this is not our own doing or resolve, but by the grace from another.

I guess what I am able to see in this recap, is that we are never able to prepare ourselves for the best offerings of this life and if we wait around for proper times and adequate training, we risk missing out on life’s greatest gifts.

We were too young.  Remarkably unprepared for the road ahead, but sometimes the training wheels have got to come off even though by so doing we know skinned knees lie ahead.  Only skinned knees need healing.

To God be the glory.  I love you Ginny Mooney.