My husband and I are those people on Facebook that inspire
other people to write blogs like “The Ten most annoying Facebook statuses ever.” Sometimes we write sappy stuff on each
other’s walls, we post pictures with captions like “check out my hot date” and
we often brag on things the other has accomplished. On our anniversary and birthdays we will talk
about how much we love the other and blah, blah, blah. He is probably worse at
it than I am, and admittedly there has been a time or two when I’ve had to be
like, “babe, that’s so cheesy, please take it down.” If this makes you roll
your eyes, I totally get it. It’s sort of annoying. And I will warn you that
this whole post might be. Sometimes you have things to write that won’t inspire
the masses but that you need to record because you want your kids to know. Maybe
it will embarrass or make you uncomfortable. So I’m sorry for that.
But if I get complimented on anything it’s probably that I’m
“real.” About 15 or 20 years ago I came to a point where I decided that I was
going to stop pretending to be something that I was not. It was the story of my
teenage years. Now my authenticity often comes out as lacking a filter and I
have a whole host of friends that would line up in agreement that sometimes my
being “real” means a little bit of TMI (sorry girls). But I do hope that most
times being real means being vulnerable, being honest, and not trying to be
more than I am; acknowledging where I struggle and hopefully being an
encouragement to others that no one has it all together and it isn’t helpful or
healthy to pretend to. Even so, I think it’s
easier to be real in my struggles than it is to be real in my areas of
strength. It’s kind of like when you ask a group of women to name something
about their bodies that they don’t like. No one has any hesitation in answering
that. On the other hand, if you ask them to name something about their bodies
that they love, it all of a sudden is very difficult and uncomfortable to
answer. Even if you know that thing about your body that you love, you feel
weird saying it out loud (I’m talking to the women here).
So that’s where I am as I sit down to write this post. Josh
and I love each other, but we certainly do not have it all together. We lose
patience, we argue, and we get frustrated with one another. We haven’t survived
the stress of robbery, a child with a scary diagnosis, lots of years of
post-graduate school, and being foster parents without some very frustrating
moments. But somewhere along the way, with the help of a church with very solid
teaching, some good mentors, and a really great community of friends, we have
each come to realize that it can’t work when you’re only looking out for your
own interests. A lot of times people say
to us, “I don’t know how you guys do it” (mostly referring to the unknowns and
challenges of foster care). And I would humbly say that I believe a strong
marriage helps. When you are on the same page as your life partner, it’s a lot
easier to ride the waves.
So if you’ll indulge me, let me tell you the story of how he
and I came to be a couple. Because there
is a story, and I think it’s a good one.
His version of it might be slightly different, but it begins when I was
in the 8th grade and there was a dorky kid that sat beside me in Algebra. I
don't remember tons about it other than he was a pest, and I told him as much
in his yearbook that spring:
Please understand me when I say to you that this was not flirting. He was honestly a pest. I was kind enough then to say that I was “just joking.” Those were the years when I was less real. Now when I call him a pest there is no need to follow that with anything else because he knows I really do mean it.
We lived in a small town and attended the same schools so our paths crossed but
we didn't necessarily hang with the same crowds. Our junior and senior year we
were both on the yearbook staff which was a pretty tight-knit group and I would
say that we were probably more than acquaintances but he wasn't someone I ever
expected to see again after graduation. We were mostly just classmates.
In '98 we left for different colleges but I heard from him and about him once
in a while because my roommate was a good friend of his. For each of us, our
freshman year in college was kind of life-changing and a very foundational part
of what shaped us into who we are today. That summer when we went back home, we
reconnected and had dinner a time or two and shared about our first year
experiences. That was the beginning of what became a really good friendship. We
had known just enough about each other’s first year of college to understand
that we had a lot in common and we connected over that.
We stayed in touch some when we went back to school, but
mostly we were summer friends who would email and occasionally hang out when we
were both home. One summer when he didn’t have access to a computer we wrote
letters back and forth (seriously, we are so old). I had a college friend that
had a great friend at Furman so every now and then she and I would make the
drive over there and visit them. Over the years Josh would tell me about the
girls he was interested in or the ones that people thought he was interested
in. He knew who my crush was and what my girlfriends thought about him. I knew
who his closest guy friends were at Furman and he knew all about my girls. He
was just a comfortable, familiar friend that I enjoyed catching up with from
time to time. I would’ve described him like a brother.
In the summer of 2001 he went to Mexico and I stayed in
Clemson, but once again, we did a lot of emailing. It was a weird summer for
both of us and we spent a lot of time telling the other about it. But over the
course of that summer, it started to change for me. It went from him being
someone I enjoyed talking with occasionally to driving over to campus late at
night to the 24-hour computer lab to see if he had written that day. I really
wanted to hear from him. I did a lot of fretting over these new feelings. He
wasn’t in the country so I was convincing myself that it was more mental and
that as soon as I was around him I would remember that he just felt like a
friend and nothing more. I spent a LOT of time chatting this out with my summer
roommate/very dear friend and another friend and mentor who was just enough older
that she could help me see outside of my perspective. They were both very
patient with me as I worked through my confusing thoughts. My honest struggles
were very superficial and shallow. I knew he was a good guy, but I didn’t want
to date someone from my hometown, I had never been attracted to him, there were
things about him that got on my nerves, and I really just didn’t want him to be
the one.
I’ll fast-forward through some details and spare you some of
the cheesiness, but we met for dinner after he returned to the country to
exchange pictures and catch up. It was very comfortable and familiar, just a
normal dinner chat over a picnic table at the lake at Furman. But there was a
moment, when he was showing me a picture, and I noticed his blue eyes. I
remember it so vividly. It was a “holy cow this pest, dorky, brother-type is
kind of looking hot to me right now” kind of moment. WHAT? We had known each
other for many years and had been good friends for several, but I had never
looked at him like that. I didn’t jump the table and kiss him or anything fun
that would make for a good story. We went our separate ways just like we did every
other time but in my heart it had just clicked and everything was different
from then on.
As school started back our senior year, we stayed in close
touch and eventually had a talk where we acknowledged that things were
changing. We remained in that limbo phase of figuring out what the transition
from friendship to courtship looked like. It was long and annoying for the
people around us. I would say, “no really, we aren’t dating.” And they would
roll their eyes. We had a very long and slow, not physical at all, growing
friendship. There were no juicy stories. We were kind of boring. But we were
falling in love and by that spring we finally called ourselves a couple and
just over two years later we were husband and wife.
We didn’t have a sparks flying, wildly attracted kind of
beginning to our relationship. We had a friendship and a mutual respect that
grew with time. Choosing to enter into a dating relationship required both of
us letting go a little bit of the ideas we had in our minds about what our
future mate would look like, because neither of us met all of the requirements
of the other’s “list.” We had to get over some things that were annoying and
let go of the idealized version of love that we had in our minds. We both had some
superficial things to work through that were hang ups in our path towards one
another. The greatest obstacle in my ability to love Josh well had nothing to
do with him needing to understand me better or compliment me more often, and
everything to do with my choice to love him as he was, in spite of his
imperfections.
I wish my 20-year old brain could have fully understood how
much more valuable that foundation of friendship and respect would be than
butterflies and love-at-first-sight kind of moments that I had envisioned in my
mind. Sure, now we are crazy about
each other and very affectionate in front of our kids. We know desire and
passion and the physical things that are an important part of marriage. We
celebrate those things and are comfortable talking about it as well as our
decision to wait for marriage to discover all of those beautiful and wonderful
things.
But, hear me kids, when I tell you that great sex, flirty
text messages, and affectionate greetings after a long day at work don’t get
you through a brain tumor diagnosis. That’s not going to be enough when you are
out of town and find out that your house was robbed and they loaded it all up
in the car that was driven right out of your garage. "I want you so bad" doesn’t
help you when you have a miscarriage and grief that runs deep because you really desire to have more children. Passion isn’t what allows you to be on the same page when you make
life-altering decisions such as bringing foster kids into your home to be
raised alongside your own kids.
On the other hand, my husband is going to feel empty if I’m
just his good friend. He has friends. He needs me to be his wife. And so there
is a beautiful merge of figuring out together how to love one another in
healthy, respectful, spiritual, fulfilling ways. It’s a process that can be
both fun and frustrating. But the hope is that we are always in process, and
that we are working to understand and honor the other, to let go of comparisons
and annoyances and be willing to forgive. We would never survive the stress of
life without that.
We will share the chocolate and flirty cards this week
because I am crazy in love with that pest and I enjoy the romance just like any
other woman. But I am thankful for the man he is on all of the other days. That
he still pursues me and we are learning together what it looks like to have
oneness. That he knows I need him to be interested in more than my body and
that I know he needs to be touched to feel loved. That we are patient as we
continue to let go of idealized versions of marriage and love, that we are
forgiving when we start comparing, that we communicate our struggles with
humility and not with the expectation of changing the other. That we are
journeying together, hand in hand on this difficult road, where sometimes the
process doesn’t look like a whole lot of progress. But we are doing it
together, as friends and as lovers, as two imperfect people, as husband and
wife.
Happy Valentine’s Day, babe. I’m so glad you’re mine.
