Finding Each Other

We had a serious discussion prior to getting married, my Hero Husband and I.  I was determined to not marry someone who even believed divorce was an option.  So I put my beloved to the test.  I flat out asked him, “Do you believe in divorce?  Because I don’t.  I won’t marry someone if there is the slightest chance, you think this won’t last a lifetime.”   Obviously, he passed, and the rest is history.  However, I wonder how many couples have had this frank of a discussion prior to their wedding day.

Over the years, we've heard friends of friends who have had marriage trouble.  We've heard stories of others, we've seen people separate and divorce and because they were more like acquaintances, it never really hit home.   We could feel sorry for them, but in the end, we really weren't empathizing.  We never let it in.

This past year, a friend of my husband separated and divorced, and a close family member of mine is currently involved in a bitter divorce.  Being no stranger to hearing gory details of the demise of relationships, I guess we had assumed that we’d weather these two tragedies in similar fashion.

Even without us knowing, it did impact us, it did have us looking at each other in different ways.  Almost like eye-balling each other, examining each interaction for those hidden signs that something must be wrong here.  If it can happen to ‘them’ it can happen to us.  And you guessed it, bickering and unrealistic expectations of each other resulted.  Finally, in a heated argument, I remember shouting, “What has changed here?!”

My beloved shook his head without word, and the first thing that came to my mind was how close these two divorces had come to our hearts.  “The only thing is your friend and my family, living through divorce!”

Again, I had silenced him, and we sat and reflected on this possible reality.

Had these two ending marriages made us suspicious of each other?  Did it impact our marriage on some level?  How do we step back and look objectively at ourselves and our own relationship, in order to avoid reliving someone else’s reality?  Their marriage was / is not ours.  Their dynamics don’t belong to us.  How can we not let someone close to us, change us?  It takes such work to put emotions aside and look objectively at a relationship and be willing to accept the other’s change and be willing to make changes ourselves.

Shortly after our heated argument, we made a decision which deep down I want to believe is both our attempts to work together on a project, compromise, and create a space only for us two.  Our master bedroom has been, like many others I've heard, a kind of catch all.  It housed toys, random items we don’t know what to do with, unfolded laundry, and a host of nick-knacks.  It had mix matched dressers, unpainted walls, dreary room-darkening curtains, and a carpet in badly need of a good cleaning.  We never owned a headboard or baseboard to our bed, no side tables.

Used to putting the children first and their needs, we tended to overlook ourselves, our own space where we would ‘crash’ at the end of the day.  It was never a room I wanted to stay in for long…..for HH too, as he never liked my room-darkening curtains, and never told me so.  I sold him on it, “Honey, it matches our bedspread!”  …which years later, he confesses, he never really liked either.

What an experiment our bedroom project has been.  No decision has been made by one or the other, we came together on every single purchase, down to the lamps, the ceiling fan, the dressers, the sheer curtains, where to rent the carpet cleaner, the color of paint for the walls, the shoe organizer in the closets and so on and so forth.  I hardly recognize our room.  It looks like a room we've vacationed in, in some far off place, a place to seek peace, relaxation and solace. 

**Funny side note, on a Spring Break vacation, our bedroom had a King size bed.  Neither of us slept well, as we could never reach out and find the other! The biggest bed was the loneliest.

As each piece was decided on and purchased, it turned out that we really do have similar ideas, and goals that we wanted to achieve in the room, first and foremost, “This is not a room for children.”

Don’t get me wrong, I love my kids. I really love my kids.  And I will never forget a great priest tell me once, “God first, girl.  Then your spouse.  Then your kids.  Then you.  In that order, girl.  In that order.”  I sat for a minute on that, to which he stated clearly, “Listen.  The best gift you can ever give to your children, that you love so much, is a great marriage and a stable home.” 

I have carried that advice with me for years and years, and it hasn't failed me. 

So yes, my children may enter our new “Vacation Room” which we have lovingly termed it, but only briefly.  It is not a place to play, bring toys or wrestle in.  Now, I have breakable things in there!  Which I love and here’s the kicker, HH loves them too.

Now, to be totally honest, we aren't completely finished with the room.  It’s a process to live in a space, and realize what needs to be here or there.  There are no pictures on the walls, still need the new bedspread and my 15 year old wedding dress still needs to find a home, but as the light shines gently to wake us every morning, and I turn to see my beloved in our ‘vacation room’ I have never loved him so much.  Not only does he still not believe in divorce, but he’s willing to invest his time, his energy, his money in something just for us.  For finding peace in hectic days.  For finding quiet from our five noisy children. 

Well, really, for finding each other.  

Living in the Now

The past is dead.  The future:  we don't know.  All we have is the Now.

Lent came and went, and just as quickly we saw Easter fly by.  We enjoyed our spring break and while things get back to normal around here, so has my time for reflection and prayer.  And yes, as you can guess, something has hit me quite extraordinarily.

A few years back, we attended a funeral.  Friends of ours who live in Wisconsin had lost their dear newborn baby boy to SIDS.  It was a difficult funeral to attend, you can imagine.  The casket was open, and his tiny face seemed to peer just above so all could witness the value and dignity of this tiny baby's life.  The cathedral was packed, standing room only, and as our friends stood up front, walked down the aisle or turned to show their own faces - it was clear, they were struck in grief.

Their whole church community grieved with them.  Looking about the pews, I'll never forget the scene.  People here and there, crying while singing, hugging while mourning, or prayerfully taking their own time in digesting such a tragedy.  Making peace with such devastation, isn't something I pretended to understand, and I still don't act as if I know it now.  I hope to never feel the depths of pain that this mother, my friend has had to endure these past years, and will always hold so close.

These family friends showed us something quite miraculous in our time up north.  They were clearly struck with grief, but their witness to that entire congregation wasn't missed on one person there.  They proclaimed a kind of gratitude you'd never find in such a tragedy in secular society.  Again and again, they stated their gladness in the Lord for the time He gave this baby on earth, with them, in their arms, in their home, in their hearts.  They saw their little boy, as having fulfilled his mission, his purpose, and God had called him home.  We never know the time or the hour.

These were people of faith.  And when I finally fought through the crowd to hug my dear friend, this baby's mother, I simply cried with her, not knowing what to say.  I searched her eyes, hoping something spontaneous would blurt out, and then she nodded, and with a quiet simplicity said, "Wasn't that the most beautiful mass you've ever seen?"

No matter what she would have said to me, I would have agreed.  I would have said 'yes' to anything, to her anger, to her grief, to her frustration or her sadness.  It would have all been justified.  She could have taken a baseball bat to the nearest target, and it would have been allowed.  Anything she did, we'd see as a mother's grief.

But she didn't.  On this day, on her newborn son's funeral, she took up a role so admirable, so poised with nobility, I scarcely recognized her.  This was her opportunity to demonstrate through her son's life and death, a living witness of God's love.  And she took it.  And she lived it.  It was, I am sure, such a sacrifice to keep herself together, to keep her wits about her.  For her son, I can imagine, she'd do anything to present the depth and value this little boy's 4 week life had.

He had an impact on hundreds of people gathered in that cathedral that afternoon.  And in his life, he never spoke a word, he never sat up and declared anything.  He never got that Harvard degree, not a doctor or a lawyer, not wealthy or wise.  He made impact, because he was alive.  That's it. His family made an impact on these hundreds because of the witness of thanksgiving they showed again and again.  In their grief, they proclaimed God's greatness, as the weekend of the funeral was the Feast of Christ the King, and several times, these parents stated, "Christ is still our King".

A month later or so, I received a Christmas card from my dear friend with a picture of her family, at their newborn's baptism.  They radiated life in this photo - all their six children gathered together all thrilled to be apart of God's family, and thrilled to have added a new member to their home.  And in this card, the family stated the joy they felt to have had their son, even for these few weeks, that his life had purpose, and still does, if it is to bring one person closer to God.

It's the only Christmas card in my house, that has never made it to the trash.   I re-read it every so often, and relive the whole experience.  However tragic, it's something I never want to forget.  It made an impression on my heart.  You never know the hour or day, that one has fulfilled their mission and is thus called home.

We don't know.

We do know the past is dead, the future is uncertain, but the now is what we have.   The now, is what we can cherish, value and make change.  So kiss your kids an extra good night kiss.  So hug your spouse a little longer than usual.  Tell someone you love them, or bite your tongue when you know you should.

Let go of the past.  Be like the birds:  fear not the future.  Be in the now.  Live in the now.  Keep your mind and heart present in every moment, aware that God was the one who gave it to you.

And as my dear friend, who still grieves for her son, would probably insist,

Give thanks for that very moment, for it is far too fleeting.

Spring Break 2013

Bringing the peace this spring break....  I'll let the photo do the talking.

Wisconsin River

Living the Way of the Cross

So on this blog, I have been MIA - yes - it happens to all of us.  I can briefly state that while we've been busy, who isn't anyway, but that I have been hammering out ways to live Lent in new ways.

Got to get this done, check that off the list, ready for that tradition and somewhere find those pair of white shoes that matches this dress just perfect, and oh geez, will Carefree wear this Easter shirt, this light teal color with little complaint?  All these questions and many more.

However, so many of the things that we mothers do, in preparation for Easter are all so important, making this season really come alive for each member of the family.  The living and breathing of Jesus' sacrifice for us, and many times, we, the moms, don't have to look far for ways to put others first.  We do it all the time.

We plan the tradition, the food, the clothes, driving them here to tutoring, there to church choir practice.  And in our free moments, we wrack our brains, have we done enough, did we teach the true meaning, of the suffering, death and resurrection of our Lord?

I thank God that we get the chance each and every year to try again.  Even should I lack one year or the next - if I keep working, moving and trying my best, the kids will absorb a whole childhood of living liturgical seasons.  The life and breath of our Faith....and it takes a life time to let it all in.

They won't get it all right now.  I have to accept that.  I know as a 38 year old, I don't have it all.  Bits and pieces, is what we all have at certain times in our lives, pieces of the grand puzzle that is the truth of our lives.    These children remind me at times, by their own questions, what we are missing, what we haven't uncovered yet.  And I love that.  I love that they ask questions, and I love being there to answer them.

And if we have a lifetime of that, it's enough.  One day, they will have questions that are beyond me....that only God will know.  So for now, I cherish these times, when the simplest answer, the "Yes, honey He did die for us.  He died for you and for me.  Isn't that super special?" - is enough to have my little Babe hug and kiss me, as if I had done the suffering, as if I had done the dying.  It's his way to show love.

And I smile inside, as should all mothers who give their time and energy, when we think we have nothing more to give - we get up again, we do suffer, we do die to our own wants and desires.  How do we live Lent?  All year long.  It's our calling, it's our vocation.  Motherhood - Another way to live the Way of the Cross.