A true marriage

Water the flowers, not the weeds.

9 years ago, Ben and I married.

Marriage is one of those things that you don’t actually know what it is until you’re in it. Like you have no concept of child birth until you’re in labor. And no concept of those first 4 months after that baby is born until you’ve lived through it without sleeping a wink. No one can describe it to you.

Marriage is the same, or at least it has been for me. You think you know what it is. You can watch all the movies. Read all the books. Ask all the right questions, and still have no clue what you’re actually getting yourself into. And for as smart as I am, I’m a slow learner.

Much of our marriage has felt like we’ve been fist to cuffs. Perennially misunderstanding each other. It felt like he could never hear the actual words coming out of my mouth. Always hearing them through a filter of anxiety or pessimism. Assuming unkind things. Assuming judgement. So much impatience. Then add Magnolia and 10X it all.

Everything is a garden to me. If I over water/feed a plant, it dies. If I underwater/underfeed a plant, it dies. I have to actually gain an understanding of its needs, and this requires me to stand back and all it to show me. To watch. To wait. It also requires me to ask the questions about my part, why am I waiting so long to water this? or why am I drowning this plant? The plant inherently has a bias for life. Fickle as it might be, it wants to live. Wants to recover. Wants to bloom. I have to allow it to by getting out of the way with my own expectations of how it should be.

I’ve had to learn to surrender. It’s the lifelong crux of most of my issues. With my work. My business. Many of my relationships. My marriage, etc... a cartoon or movie is coming to my mind where a character gets their sword or gun, fixes their hat and shouts, “NEVER SURRENDER,” and they all start running and all fall to their deaths. That’s me. Never surrendering to anything! almost always to my detriment. You’ll NEVER TAKE ME ALIVE! about literally everything in my life. Just holding on so tight. Fighting SO HARD. For safety. For comfort. For a sense of control. I’ve been like a locked box trying to protect myself ready to burn everything to the ground for the majority of my life.

Until I met my Aries husband who already has the match lit.

We’ve both had to surrender. We were both deeply independent, strong willed, loner, lonely artist types very much set in our ways when we came together, and that has taken a tremendous amount of deprogramming. Undoing.

We’ve had to break things apart start over. We’ve had to rebuild a lot. Marriage is not something that you just plant and hope for the best.

We’re perennial.

We’ve got to get cut back in the winter to allow for all that new growth in the spring. Leave old ways behind. We know what it is to work as a team. To trust each other. To take turns in the lead. To turn inward toward one another for comfort and help and guidance. We were relatively old when we met, but we’ve grown up so much together.

I love Ben with all my heart. He’s truly good. He’s such a good dad. He’s absolutely devoted to us. He’s my guy, and we’ve built a beautiful family. We love each other so much, and we are 100% a work in progress. And now we’ve got something really sturdy and special, and none of it came easy or quickly.

But it has given us deep roots to draw from.

Happy Birthday to our family.