Two Years as of Yesterday

Steve and I have decided that, as long as it is possible, we're going to try to do a little weekend something for our anniversary. So far, there's only been two opportunities to make good on this. The second was this past weekend. We took a few days down in Tampa with our annual Busch Gardens passes to give ourselves some time to not be distracted by our respective responsibilities here. We're both very grateful to be in a position with his work and my school to run off for a couple of days without major consequence 'back home.' Being able to do this creates the mental and physical space for us to just talk and process and reflect and enjoy.

This weekend, one of the things that kept running through my mind is how marriage always seemed extremely strange to me when I was younger but now being married to Steve seems perfectly natural. I think part of that was because all marriage in my youthful life involved truly adult people--32 or above. Not people I found it easy to relate to when I was 15 (I was one of those shaky, shifty teenagers that didn't know how to talk to people who were out of college). It never occured to me until I went to college that one could marry before the age of 30. No one in my family did. It was sometime in college that I realized that marriage was more than a social contract or a polite legal agreement between two people (apparently male and female, but not necessarily--whoa, now I've admitted too much) or a manner of religious coercion between a man and a woman (the first Christian marriage I ever encountered was headed up by a man who once 'grounded' his wife for gaining 5 lbs). Marriage was all of those things and a cloud of amorphous unknowing for me, too.

But in college marriage took a different face altogether. There were two couples who were very formative in my desire ever to get married, let alone get married young. The Boroughs and the Kapics had marriages where the mutual respect was obvious and constant (at least when I was around). The husband and wife enjoyed each others' company, were polite and appreciative to each other, spoke as equals, trusted each other--their marriages seemed like glorified friendships. Granted they were much more than friendships, but friendship had never been associated with marriage much before that for me. It hadn't occured to me that I could be friends with someone I married.

I feel so daft writing it all now because, well, I am married and I wouldn't be married if those things weren't true of how my husband relates to me--with respect and trust, as an equal, appreciative and polite, very patient and kind, honestly and openly. And I'm continually surprised that I can relate to him in the same way. I can't help but believe and be thankful that God heard us in our prayers as we sought marriage and in the worship of our wedding ceremony. Enjoying my husband's company proves to me that God is blessing this covenant we've made. And that is unavoidably humbling.