I've been married for 8 years...

And I still don't quite know how that happened!

I was listening to the radio show "The Bert Show" on my way in to work this morning, and they were doing a segment about healthy, long running relationships. They were asking people to call in and in one sentence explain how they have stayed together so long. They gave examples like: "Raising the kids together has really cemented our bond", "Trusting each other", "Not fighting over money", "Sharing our faith with each other", "Doing athletic things together".

It struck me that Husband and I aren't bound by those things. I can't have kids, and he chose to marry me knowing that. I have trust issues, and he loves me anyway. We do fight over money, because we've lost our house to forclosure and now if we don't have the willingness to be more stubborn than each other, we end up spending more than we earn. (I am openly admitting he's talked me off the ledge of some insane purchases in the past!) We don't share the same faith either. I'm now a Catholic, and he is a Protestant. He plays baseball when the boys are interested, but we had to sell our matching bikes because I can't ride anymore.

I think what binds us together through all this mess is that we both stood before God and everyone we knew and promised we would stick it out and become "one flesh". That through everything we would always choose each other. There are times when I wouldn't choose him, or he wouldn't choose me except for that promise. There are times where we both wholeheartedly choose each other and we would make any onlooker sick to their stomach by how gushy we can be. Most of the time we're like a very comfortable pair of friends. I think if we ever stop investing in our friendship it would be very easy to say "I give up on that promise".

Husband has had some huge curveballs thrown his way lately. There has been a lot of increased pressure on our union. But I know who he's coming home to at night. I know he's going to help me feed the animals, and I'll gripe at him to kick his shoes off because "carpets catch all kinds of bacteria!!", and he'll roll his eyes, but kick them off anyway. I know that he'll ask "What's for dinner?" but now he'll try to learn how to help me make it. I know that we'll sit on the couch with Charlie at our feet and a cat on the back of the sofa behind each of us, and we'll watch a show Husband picks out while we eat what we made. I know with certainty that even if I'm too tired to clean the dishes, he won't gripe about it, and when it's time to go to bed we'll play fight over who has to turn off the lamp.


I think that's something that can't be summed up into one sentence.