Marriage is not hard.

I must be a slow learner, because eight years have passed and I am just awakening to this truth: Marriage is not hard. Marriage, the equal yolking of two well-matched individuals for life, is not so difficult in principle and practice. You know what is difficult? Overcoming selfishness. Constantly squashing the urge to serve one's own desires, to not eat the whole pint of Ben and Jerry's, because, puhh, I want to. Marrying someone, and being married to someone is not the hard business. You say, I do, and then you say I do, I do, I do, over and over and over again, every day, until death do us part. But the hard part is not saying I do, also and simultaneously, to 401 other commitments that, in themselves, are not inherently wrong. However, the leading parent-teacher council and the working overtime, the agreeing to bake 3 dozen cupcakes for the party--they all steal energies and consume time and wring us out like dirty dishrags from the demands of married partnership. Marriage is not so hard. Marriage is not the enemy or the whipping girl. Marriage is good, it is so so good. Our selfish, guilt-filled, distracted parts are the ones that make marriage bad and hard and toxic and weak.

I've also learned that marriage doesn't need us to define it. And believe it or not, that's not a political statement. Even though marriage is mired in politics, especially in this country, marriage has been doing just fine since God had the idea to pull Eve from Adam's rib so that man would not be lonely, so that he would be in the good company of equal partnership. Marriage, as institutions go, is pretty strong. I can't think of too many more that have been keeping on, by the same name, since their inception like marriage has. But it seems as though we're spending a lot of our time trying to define the bounds of this marriage thing than actually living out our calling as married people.

My role in marriage is to make mine strong, care for, and enjoy my marriage. If others ask how I feel about cohabitation before marriage, or culture clashes in marriage, oh sure. I can tell them. Truth be told, though, on any given day, I find the maintenance of my own marriage is an immense task. To see marriage as anything but hard is hard for me. Is anything worth defending that I am not already treasuring? My desire is to be good to my marriage, but the temptation is forever to be good only to myself. I can barely fathom having enough time to judge the adequacy of others' marriages. I cannot spare the energy that defining someone else's marriage requires when I should be busy about finding God in my own little marriage pond and keeping the distractions at bay. Marriage does not need me to define it. Marriage needs me to be in it, 100%, and eight years have taught me that task alone requires my 100% dedication.

Eight years has also taught me that marriage is not long enough. Supposedly Loverpants and I have surpassed the "seven year itch." Last week I told the mister that this last year has taught me the most about my husband. That's seven years after we walked down the aisle and THIRTEEN years after we first became cookies n' milk. This past year we have faced foreclosure, bankruptcy, the traumatic loss of an animal, major family crises, cancer in our family, and we have grown closer and become stronger through these trials. Seven years is considered a symbolically long time in the Bible. Yet it feels like a drop in the bucket to me! Matthew 22 says we will not be married to one another in Heaven, but to Christ. In this way, marriage is for eternity, but from my flawed human view, I don't want to imagine living without my husband. I know that marriage is intended to be a foretaste of God's total devotion and unconditional love for us. I feel as though I fall so short of that kind of love for my husband. I basically fight the urge to tell him to figure out dinner every.single.day. Occasionally I will joke and tell Loverpants that I am doing such a great job preparing him for his second marriage. And in a way, I am right. We are all, you and I, preparing each other for Heaven. Married couples are preparing one another for the ultimate marriage. Maybe that's why marriage right now feels so hard. And yet, so important.

Happy 13 years together Happy 7 years married Happy 2 years as Southerners Happy almost anniversary, Lovey Loverpants! <3

photo credits to Steven Mastroianni, the best.

Village by the Bay

The same fields, the flat, dandelion-specked fields along Cahoon Road have felt hundreds of thousands if not millions of soccer balls course across them--these are the fields that transform to carnival grounds every 4th of July. The same rides, tents, cotton candy every year. The same carnies, the same putt-putt game hosted by the Republican Club. It's a vestige of a Norman Rockwell America. The bandstand and the boosters and the veterans and the flags. Every heart in Bay Village breaks a little bit the day that the rides are disassembled. Bay Days is over, which means so much more than just Bay Days is over. Summer is somehow now on the wane. There will still be pool days and summer reading and running into your summer crush at someone's softball game. But you will never come back to Bay Days except as a year older, wiser, and maybe too cool for all this. Only when you are removed for so many years, the ghosts of Bay Days past revisit you. You are haunted by the feelings of what it is to be a teenager on these grounds, and how conflicted you were, being both independent enough to go without your parents and yet still so awkward running into your teacher next to the giant slide. You hear the echoes of your bestie screaming her guts out on the salt and pepper shaker, and the sense memory of the funnel cake cart comes rushing back to convince you that no time has passed at all. Come fall, these fields are trampled by the cleated feet of every kid who was ever raised in Bay Village, tracking soccer balls in one direction and then the other, stopping only for orange slice breaks.

These fields which bisect East Bay from West Bay, because there is such a thing--people will ask you, "East side of Bay?"--even though this little village that is practically slipping off the cliff into Lake Erie is so tiny, it still has subregions. Neighborhoods, real neighborhoods with real trees that tell stories of children who still ride bikes everywhere, that remember when a little girl was kidnapped from the Village Center. Bay Village is arguably the mini-van capital of the world. People not only make eye contact but they say Hi, and Good morning, while running along the lake, or taking a cut-through Huntington Park.

It is possible to stand on the fields at Cahoon and feel as though you've known everyone who has ever lived or will live in Bay Village, Ohio, to be stirred by the legacy of recreation, these fields that both unites neighbors and divides a small town.

This is the place where my father was raised, where my parents chose to return to raise their own children. This is the place that made me, and which I now bring my children to help them understand, maybe (?) a little part of this American dream.

***

A byproduct of Bay Village, my sister celebrating her entry into the twirties....

And my bro.

Chipmunk walks into a bar. err. Bedroom.

The little man who lives with me, the one who, if whining were a full-time job would be making six figures, was napping on the floor of my in-laws' bedroom yesterday afternoon. I was also in a similar position on the floor when I looked up to see a chipmunk bounding across the carpet, toward the bathroom. The chipmunk did not appear to be running from anything or anyone. Rather, it gamboled across the room like a schoolgirl excitedly returning home with an "A" on her astronomy test. Yipee! Got 'em all right! And that Pluto question didn't trip her up! No sir! NOT a planet no mo'!

I knew immediately it was a chipmunk, as I am practically a woodland creature expert having grown up in the arboreal 'burbs of the Mid-west, and yet I kept examining the chipmunk because I knew I was going to have to report to my father-in-law that there was a chipmunk in his house and I needed to be absolutely certain that this was not another rodent or similar cavorting pestilence. There was no doubt this was a descendent of Uncles Chip and Dale, however. The spots and the lack of long tail and the gambol. Definitely a member of the species chippus munkeitus.

[showmyads]

An all out pursuit of the speckled li'l imposter ensued once my father-in-law finally accepted that this wasn't just a white girl calling a runaway hamster a chipmunk. My father-in-law rooted through the closets and under clothespiles and under beds. He saw the creature, and as Loverpants said, "Well, two people have seen it, so I guess that means it was really a chipmunk."

Hours later, my father-in-law said he saw the chipmunk escape once he opened the garage door.

I'm going to trust that this house is now chipmunk-free, lest I be tempted to reenact that scene with the little old woman and the shotgun in Ratatouille.

When the chipmunk (or one of his other squatter friends--perish the thought!) finally exited the building, I thought about how uncommon this experience was.

Not only the part about the chipmunk. But the part about the problem exiting the way it came in.

***

A diagnosis comes, a check bounces.  We are eager to be on the other side of this mess. We want to know the way out. But often in the dark theater of our lives, the glowing EXIT sign is a misnomer. It is a door that leads right back into the same dark theater, unless we can figure out how we got there in the first place.

How often do we struggle with something that is of our own making, or of our own invitation? When we have stress, do we often cast the blame on situations beyond our control? Or do we examine the landscape and see that we very much built the buildings casting shadows, and paved the roads that are now filled with potholes.

The chipmunk got into the house for reasons unknown but surely guessed: a pattern of careless door closing, a clandestine opening in the attic. It got out, but it could once again scare the ever living snot out of me tomorrow unless conscious changes are made.

***

My children borrow phrases from the Rescue Bots, the new, significantly more demented generation of Transformers. They sing the theme songs in their idle moments. They reenact scenes for me. And I struggle to remember whether I paid my credit card bill this month but I can bust out the entire rhyme of "Miss Suzy had a Steamboat" at the drop of a dime.

I can't unlearn or unsee or unhear some things rattling around inside of me. My children, their spongey minds and hearts ready to absorb everything around them (except my pleas to brush their teeth), are no different. For now, I can still generally audit most of the material they are absorbing. I still feel convicted to guard these little ones' hearts more vigilantly. Turns out that chipmunk got in he hasn't quite left yet. Not from my head at least.