Morgan wrapped his arm around my shoulder the other day.
“I had forgotten what it feels like to have your arm around me. That probably means we’ve been too busy,” I said.
“Probably,” he said. And we both smiled that sad, tender kind of smile that lets the other person know we mean to make a change.
I used to hear about how many marriages break up after the kids go off to college and wonder how two people could survive life together that long and then suddenly not be able to make it work. But now that we are driving headfirst into the teen years, I think I get it. At least a little bit.
We have no time together. How can we make our marriage last when we have no time together?
Our lives revolve around practice schedules, school projects, kids’ events, and our church and work responsibilities. Our forties are the busiest years yet, and the pace doesn’t seem to be evening out any time soon. We are doing all the things, and often we aren’t doing them together.
But if I close my eyes and think of the first time I realized his eyes soften and glow when he looks at me, or when I remember those wispy baby heads and smooth baby cheeks of days gone by, somewhere in the deep memory of my heart, my soul catches glimmers of the love that has woven us all together. The days gone by were a much simpler time, when the children were a part of our lives, instead of the way it is now, when their ever-expanding lives subdue our own.
It would be easy to loosen our grip on each other because of the need to keep pace with the kids in this stage of life.
Oh, yes, of course the days are “easier” now. Children who can pour cereal and play a rousing game of dominoes are pure joy and brimming with fun. They (reluctantly) do chores, and they (sometimes) have good manners. We take long walks through the neighborhood on late summer nights, and no one cries in a stroller because they need a diaper change. We’re clearly winning in life at long last.
But it’s painful to let your children grow up and away, too. As difficult as it is to explain in words, I carry a deep longing for babies that I can’t really hold again. And if I let that longing dominate my soul, I think I could lose my way to my own happier ever after with the man I promised to love most of all forever and ever.
I am a mom. But I was a wife first. For some reason that can be easy to forget.
I need my husband’s arm around my shoulder. I need to reminisce about who we once were while we dream together about who we’re becoming. The memories we share of our struggle through those early years of marriage and parenting are a treasure only the two of us really understand.
I don’t know what I would do if there wasn’t someone else who remembered how we barely had rent money every month in our first year of marriage, how Boy 1 crawled like a worm, or the way Boy 3 walked exactly like Curious George. Who else can understand the magical sound that was Boy 2 saying “tis-miss tee” instead of “Christmas Tree? And what other human can hold my hand and know that the baby Lady needs to always be the baby to me?
It was hard for Morgan and me to get along when sleep was a luxury that four children under five didn’t allow us. Now it’s hard for us to have any idea what’s going on with the other person because our time alone is usually the hours sandwiched between 1am and 6am.
Now that the little tinies are the great-big kids, we still have great need of each other. Even so, it’s tempting to dull our ache for one another. To let this busy life we love be the thing that grounds us, and ignore the day that is coming on down the road- the day it is just the two of us again.
The seasons of life come and go. The great north star guiding us onward is the love that endures and mingles itself with the past, the present, and the future. This arduous road we walk weaves our souls together, and we are each other’s best reward.
So how do we make our marriage last? How do we protect and tend the love we share?
Enjoy the reward. Take refuge in one another’s company, even if it has to happen at 1am. Remember all the joys and struggles of the past and refuse to let go of our hope for the future. Make space for failure and forgiveness. Let your words be full of mercy and kindness. Pray together, laugh together, eat together.
Put our arms around one another and remember our story is not finished yet. The day is coming that it will just be the two of us, creating a new life with kids who live somewhere out there. Those can be our best years yet.
Just don’t let go.
