Our first two years of marriage will not be forgotten. The unexpected, dark places have become depths of personal strength, and now we are not afraid to dig deeper and take root in them. We always knew what we wanted and what was growing above, but now we are sure of what is growing deep below.
It’s like your marriage begins with a seed of love that is pressed into the ground with a vow of forever. The nutrient-rich dirt is full of trust, promises and compromises with the hope and faith that your tree of marriage will grow into something rooted, storm resistant and everlasting. But what about the beginning where you become buried in the unknown? Where you do not know which way is up? Where the new earth surrounding you is not just yours anymore?
Our marriage (not just our first year) is capped off with a crust that is hard to break through. You think you know someone, and you believe that they know what is necessary about you, but then marriage reveals that there is a dark, thick soil surrounding your simple seed of love. It suddenly becomes not as simple anymore, and you have to learn to live with each other’s organic matter, trust the roots you take, and then grow through the topsoil.
When I was engaged, I remember looking at marriage ahead of me with almost a sense of accomplishment. I had perceived myself and my relationship to be superior due to our messy yet grounding past. I thought we were as prepared as we could be, as we wanted the same things in life, shared values, laughter and most importantly, we were both grounded in who we were as individuals. This resulted in pride for me, I was wholeheartedly trusting my gut, my love for Adam and my relationship with God.
There have been times where we poured a foundation of selfishness, confusion, anxiety, secrets, lies and jealousy that created a fortress with no real architectural goal. We’ve loved disconnected, reassuring each other of incomparable feelings, and then hammering fear and threats into each other’s hearts in such manipulative ways because conflict is still this ugly ogre. We’ve taken the words “I love you” and milled it into a fine dust that we have sprinkled around, called “hope”, as our relationship became clouded with the uncertainty and confusion of being newly married.
So much has changed since then. I guess that happens when you quit your job and pack up a life to travel the world together however, our travels throughout this year are primarily about making intentional decisions for our lifestyle and marriage. While travel itself isn’t the magic here, it is the space in which we create self-awareness, value-based living and acceptance. We are learning to shape our mindset by not supporting each other through the filters of “good” and the “bad” rather, by seeing these experiences as a way to understand each other and connect through more than just our emotions. We had to surrender ourselves individually to the idea of living in unison no matter what, and then absorb the fact that our vows were eternal and unbending. Although this seems to be an obvious undertaking when you sign up for marriage, bliss can be blinding, and the reality of our commitment unapologetically revealed itself not long after.
There is so much beauty in the balances of marriage. Any person who has experienced it will say, “marriage is hard work”, and most people who are not married will flutter their hands at that fable, roll their eyes, and forget about it. It is one of those wonders that is hard to understand until you are a part of the club - which makes it all the more shocking once you have joined.
Marriage has swiftly humbled me. I thought that we had built a concrete foundation, made up of unnecessary suffering but marriage quickly reminded me of the shifting earth below. I knew love, but I did not know that there was an even greater capacity for it; that the fertility of the soil around us was capable of supporting a giant. It is hard work, yes, but what I have learned thus far is that marriage is limitless when it comes to love and personal growth if you let it be.
