Marriage : A Gardener's Dilemma
Last month when I polled what people wanted this blog to focus on, seventy-five percent of you asked to hear more about marriage (in-comparison to parenting). When working out the name of the blog, marriage sat at the heart of my rutted and worn Cobblestone road. It’s true Lucas and I are approaching eight years however our ruts or rather experiences with marriage began before our own. We are both children of divorced parents, Lucas when he was five and I in my teens. My parents’ marriage was not easy, both suffered and yet held on for over twenty years. My husbands’ parents had a similar story. We have known close friends and family members walk through the agony of divorce. We have also watched, with awe and admiration, flailing marriages recover and bloom into thriving partnerships.
The next few posts will focus on marriage, especially our experience and will be somewhat chronological. Before getting into the anecdotal weeds, I want to begin by saying Lucas and I have reached a vista in our marriage. We are in a season of healing and reflection, with grace we are being shown our past failings and successes. However even in the recovery and rest, we are being careful and vigilant to not boast at where we are. There is still much work to do, behaviors to be mindful of, old thought patterns to look out for. We call it “marriage maintenance” and it takes daily humility to accept the changes.
“Nearly all marriages, even happy ones, are mistakes in the sense that almost certainly (in a more perfect world, or even with a little more care in the very imperfect one), both partners might be found more suitable mates. But the real soul-mate is the one you are actually married to.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
When Lucas and I dated and got engaged, we were not immune to the interpersonal battle marriage can be. As I inferred earlier, we had front row seats to the hardships of marriage when we were children. However, it is very different to observe something and experience it second-hand versus experiencing it first-hand. For instance, I discovered the most horrifying and shocking truth on day fourteen of being married. Marriage, in truth, is not a vehicle created to serve the self. To my utter dismay. My first real dose of “suck it up buttercup” was on the last day of our honeymoon. We were completing our road trip loop which began on Whidbey Island. We drove down the Olympic Peninsula, along the Oregon Coast to the Redwoods in California. We turned north to Crater Lake, stopped into Bend and from there we would head home to Seattle. However I was not ready to go home. I wanted to stop in Leavenworth for one last night and extend the honeymoon for an evening. Lucas, mindful of expenses, made the call to go home.
As a result, I had a stage five tantrum. Friends, I about left that man in a Sonics parking lot in Yakima, Washington in early July. Never mind the triple digits, the Old Navy sandals on my feet or the fact I had no car. I threatened to call my mom* (*like a six year old wanting to end a playdate?! Dear Lawd save me) and have her drive out and pick me up. This story is embarrassing to share, slightly funny but sad. I can laugh at my immaturity and selfishness because (graciously) God has made me a different woman. But I am still shocked at how child-like my thinking was, how stunted I was in serving and loving others, especially Lucas. For Lucas, I think my behavior was equally shocking and a sad foreshadowing of the years to come.
“I speak of what I have seen with my Father, and you do what you have heard from your father.” John 3:38
Lucas and I found ourselves in a challenging marriage almost immediately. Our mirrors of marriage were fractured. We had set expectations, inadequate communication tools and real and preconceived trauma regarding marriage which affected our ability to trust one another. Within months, we independently felt lies creep into our thinking, “we’ve made a mistake”, “they deceived me, now I know who they really are”, “now I am trapped, like our parents were”. The danger of a lie is it takes root like a weed, it needs little nutrition or light to thrive. And in those lies, we can take on the burden of others that are not ours to carry, we can carry generational carnage. Our marriage was quickly growing weeds but I am getting ahead of myself. Before the weeds was a garden. Lucas and I had been given time, and lots of it, to clear, till and sow land. Our garden was young but it was healthy and more importantly, we knew we could trust one another to work hard and maintain the land.
June 20th, 2015
The Wayfarer on Whidbey Island.
God’s greatest gift to our marriage was the friendship we built prior to dating. I think if we had begun our relationship off romantically, we would have missed the fun and simple season of getting to know one another authentically. We became fast friends after meeting one another. We were interning together at our church and I found Lucas’ perspective on faith and serving genuine and real, never moralistic or legalistic. We spent hours in community with other people. The foundation of our friendship had trust, humor, mutual respect, and common hobbies like hiking and back packing. Most foundational, since it was the reason we met, was our mutual desire to serve God and His people. Eventually and without trying, I realized my respect for him as a person had grown to love.
Once we began to date, the process was intentional and surrounded by people who loved us. We attended a pre-marriage seminar in central WA Lucas’ dad had recommended. We went through Financial Peace University to start tackling lingering student debt. Our pastor and his wife met with us for pre-marriage counseling and more consistently we had weekly dinners with a dear couple we asked to mentor us. Lucas and I were hungry for a healthy marriage because we saw how God used it for His good. We wanted to love one another well… this was our garden. In the darkest seasons of our marriage, these are the facts God presents to me.
Weeding a garden is paramount to its health, despite what Emerson or 19th century romantics believed. Michael Pollan once wrote a piece for the New York Times Magazine. He wrote:
“Eventually I came to see that my weed-choked garden was ridiculous, even irresponsible. The garden plants had thrown in their lot with me, and I had failed to protect them from the weeds. So I ripped out the garden and began anew. As I see it, the day I decided to disturb the soil, I undertook an obligation to weed. For this soil is not virgin, and hasn’t been for centuries… strictly speaking, these seeds are really the descendants of earlier gardeners. To let them grow, to do nothing, is tantamount to letting those gardeners plant my garden: To do nothing, in other words, would be no favor to me, or my plants, or nature. So, I weed.”
With all the preparation and community at our side, Lucas and I were still battling weeds we never planted, they had been planted long ago by our parents or their parents before them. Generational sin and trauma is funny like that. Other weeds began to sprout up as a result of our own hands. Weeds like habitual criticism, defensiveness, stonewalling and contempt (Gottman is a true pal). Other weeds looked like extended unemployment, assuming the worst in one another, not taking responsibility for our behavior or unwillingness to forgive. After a year and a half of letting “nature” run its course in our garden, any/all health was being choked. I asked Lucas if he wanted to start weeding with me. The problem was we didn’t know how. So we called in reinforcements, a dear and wonderful marriage counselor, named Larry. This is where we will pause for now.
