It is interesting, how I romanticized love and marriage back in high school and college. I somehow found myself most moved by the humanity of modern relationships that Bruce Springsteen so often wrote about...
Don't run back inside
darling you know just what I'm here for
So you're scared and you're thinking
That maybe we ain't that young anymore
Show a little faith, there's magic in the night
You ain't a beauty, but hey you're alright
Oh and that's alright with me
...
Everybody's got a hunger, a hunger they can't resist,
There's so much that you want, you deserve much more than this,
But if dreams came true, oh, wouldn't that be nice,
But this ain't no dream we're living through tonight,
Girl, you want it, you take it, you pay the price
...
Now our luck may have died and our love may be cold but with you forever I'll stay
We're goin' out where the sand's turnin' to gold so put on your stockin's baby 'cause the night's getting cold
And everything dies baby that's a fact
But maybe everything that dies someday comes back
...
There was just something about real people in a real relationship at the point of a kind of crossroads - "either we do this or we don't, because what else is there" type of romanticism - that I wanted to be able to grab hold of - to live by - so to not become victim to comfort and security and death and divorce. I know I could not articulate that feeling then, but that seems to be what it was. And somehow, it also seems, that I knew I could not do it alone. I had to (certainly wanted to) find the "Mary" that Springsteen so often sang about.
...
Spiritually speaking, I believe our first ten years of marriage have sustained the "either we do this or we don't" foundation because of our love and shared life together - rather than the lack of love or bottomed out luck. Maybe more memorable than our actual wedding ceremony (for me at least), was an event shortly before or after our wedding in which we prayed privately together in a public church service that God's Will be done in our marriage - not for our own safety and security - but in service of others in a Kingdom Come kind of way. It was a statement that we have no individual goals or plans, but instead we were going to be open to where God takes us together.
I believe that has served us well in Grandview, ENC, Irontown, and Franklintown. Each place providing more "crossroads" conversations than the next - each one more challenging and difficult to find balance - each one with more unexpected gifts (other than children) that sustain us, our marriage, our family, and our spirituality. We definitely have a sense in hindsight that we have been dependent on God, even when our faith goes down the shitter - despite ourselves, we have been sustained.
And now we find ourselves growing our family together. Probably our greatest challenge yet. Four kids in ten years. Ten years from now, they will be 17, 15, 13, and 11.
Either we do this, or we don't.
Placentas, Peacemaking, and Margaritas.
...
