I just feel so much. I say, with a tear-squeaky voice. I know. You say, holding space. You’re not alone. My carefully constructed walls continue to crumble. Have courage, my vulnerable, beating heart. I’m flooded with the joy, and terror, of love.
Category: Marriage
Celebrating We
This past week marked a significant milestone in my professional life – I finally completed my clinical hours and can apply for full licensure as a marriage and family therapist. My husband so sweetly marked this occasion with having a little surprise celebration ready for me upon my return from work. But truly, I think instead of celebrating me, we were and are really celebrating “we”.
I used to have a very individualistic understanding of life, including in how I took pride in “my” work and “my” efforts and “my” accomplishments. I felt as though “my” time was just that – mine – and that how I chose to spend it and what impact these choices had was largely my own business. Looking back, I realize that truly time and accomplishments were never really only my own – every moment is a gift from the LORD, as are any talents or resources that I may have. And from the time I was small what I did was only made possible by the love and support of family and friends. Yet I often failed to realize my need of others, and became overly focused on my ability to choose and to do.
Just how much of an illusion the idea of “my” time and efforts and accomplishments is – and really always was – has become evident to me in such tangible ways since becoming married and linking my life to that of my husband’s, and even more so since having a baby. With each day that passes, I realize increasingly clearly that whatever I do requires sacrifice and means that I am not doing something else – and that this has large implications for those closest to me, especially my husband and toddler. Motherhood is also incredibly humbling, in that I realize quickly and often the limits of my own capabilities and energies and efforts, and repeatedly learn that I can really only “accomplish” anything with the support of loved ones and by grace of God.
I am so grateful I have a husband who loves me so well and so generously, and a toddler who has been so flexible. The completion of my licensure hours is all the more meaningful to me since it is such a tangible reminder of all of the love and care and support of those I love most dearly – my husband and toddler as well as so many other family members, friends, teachers, mentors, and supervisors. I am so thankful my husband and I can celebrate this milestone together while continuing to be on this adventure of life with one another and striving to love one another well. As I believe is true in most of life, I find accomplishment is sweetest when shared and made possible in the context of meaningful relationship.
Messy
My husband and I are finding that as our baby gets increasingly mobile – he can now “creep” about the floor remarkably quickly! – our home gets increasingly messy. Even when my husband and I try our best to tidy up the living room at the end of the day, just a few minutes after we come downstairs the following morning, toys and baby things are strewn about everywhere – cars, shapes, stackable cups, balls, rings, animals, teethers, puzzles, activity stations, stuffed animals, pillows, blankets and more. Sometimes all of these baby items make our relatively small living room feel too crowded and chaotic and unpredictable and out of control and disorganized…in a word, messy. But it also feels lived in, as all of these various items are reminders of moments shared in this space – moments of laughter and connection and learning and play, and also of tears and frustration. As our baby learns and grows, and as we learn and grow with him, messiness happens, but even our small and limited living room is proving capable of holding these experiences. This messy living room is the very space in which relationship and connection is occurring, and in which each day we are getting to know our dear little baby better and better – and, I hope, in which he is getting to know us. And when we think of this, my husband and I truly wouldn’t have it be any other way.
This tangible picture of messiness as a means of play – and therefore, connection – that I get to experience daily with my baby makes me think of the more abstract “messiness” of connection that I experience in relationship, particularly relationship with my husband. Lately my husband and I have been having some hard conversations within the “living room” of our marriage; while there is a part of me that wants to “clean up” this relational space instead of allowing complex emotions and different perspectives and sometimes contradictory desires and varying opinions and numerous needs and heavy stressors to get “strewn about”, doing so would actually mean our relationship was not particularly “lived in”, and would likely make it hard to truly be engaging with one another. So my husband and I have been trying our best to process our relationship by discussing how we each are experiencing one another and our marriage, how we are feeling known and loved well, and how we could be knowing and loving one another better – we are trying to “play” in our relational space with one another. This is sometimes hurtful and hard, and we both often fall short of how we aspire to love one another, but it is also usually ends up fostering greater mutual connection and closeness and knowing and learning and growing. And I think over the years, we are becoming increasingly able to trust in our love for one another within the messy “living room” of our marriage, and to then trust that this love is strong enough to hold the honesty of painful emotions, truths, and experiences alongside joyful experiences. Or, said another way, we are learning that our love for one another is strong enough and safe enough to hold mutual vulnerability, for even though we at times hurt one another – both intentionally and unintentionally – at the end of the day we know our hearts are for one another, and, by God’s grace, always will be.
The Overnight Visit
Our baby experienced another large milestone this week – he had his very first night away from mommy and daddy. Perhaps an even bigger, concurrent milestone was that my husband and I had our very first night away from him. This night had been some time in coming; our anniversary is at the end of June, and to help us celebrate, my parents planned a visit in which they hoped to both soak up time with baby and also to watch him overnight for one evening of the trip. My husband and I had been greatly looking forward to Nana and Papa’s visit, but were uncertain as to whether we would actually be able follow through with leaving our baby for an entire evening away – although to help encourage said follow through, we made sure to book a local hotel in advance so that we had an external commitment. (As an aside, I find it both humorous and humbling to find that while, before baby was born, I insisted that I would be able to prioritize marriage and would be intentional in finding ways to be alone with my husband regularly, ever since baby was born I find it incredibly challenging to be away from baby for more than a few hours. I now understand why not all parents get out often!)
This past week the long-awaited visit with Nana and Papa finally arrived, and included many sweet moments shared together as a family, including zoo adventures and playing with toy towers and walking and going to Target and baby generally enjoying being the center of attention, along with all the lavish of snuggles and coos and admiration this role entails. Baby seems to be slowly leaving the “stranger danger” phase of development, and is instead beginning to enter into a stage where he mostly likes the attention of others, especially Nana and Papa, and particularly if my husband and I are still in the room. Baby plays more gently and quietly with others (instead of being his usual boisterous and busy self) but still has many smiles to share, some snuggles to give, and much shared enjoyment. He particularly relished being on outings where Nana and Papa could hold him while he looked at the interesting world around him – some of his favorite moments of being held seemed to be while looking at zoo exhibits and at toys in the store. And as baby delighted in engaging with Nana and Papa and in looking at the world, I delighted in watching baby and my parents together, enjoying one another. It was so very sweet to be able to share the joy of him with them, and in doing so it felt as though the joy of motherhood multiplied. These felt like such sweet, quintessential “grandparent time” moments, and left my heart feeling so full.
Thankfully, this fullness of heart borne of several days of time shared with my parents led to me feeling ready – or at least as ready as possible! – to actually try to spend the night away with my husband. These moments from earlier in the visit helped me see that baby is able to be with others (away from me) more than I might think, and that he may even enjoy doing so. I know that my parents certainly enjoy being with him. This time shared together also led me to reflect on how I want to be able to let my baby go enough that he actually gets to be with and form relationship others; I do not want to anxiously keep him to myself and always try to “protect” him even now that he is growing bigger. While my desire to be with my baby is motivated by my love for him, I wonder if loving entails a balance of both holding close and letting go. My parents were offering to love me (and my husband) by watching our baby, but I think that me accepting and trusting was also a way for me to love my baby and to love my parents (who cherish time with my baby). Being away to celebrate our marriage was also, of course, a way for me to love my husband.
With these thoughts in mind, Friday night arrived. After packing an overnight bag, I fed baby and gave him his bedtime bath and put on his jammies and nursed him and snuggled him close – and then my husband and I kissed our baby and told him we loved him before giving him to Nana to rock to sleep. And, away my husband and I drove, just the two of us, for our first time of being out of the house as just two for more than 3 or 4 straight hours since baby was born. And it was surreal and refreshing and precious and weird and wonderful and exciting and celebratory – and it truly happened! My husband and I enjoyed doing small things reminiscent of how we used to share time together prior to baby – we went to dinner and talked about everything and nothing, we wandered around and looked at random points of interest, we got ice cream and coffee, we drove around and listened to music, we laughed at one another’s jokes, we enjoyed having no responsibilities for over twelve whole hours and watched corny hotel movies and marveled at a night of uninterrupted sleep, we slept in, we went to brunch. We reflected on our marriage and the ways in which our love has grown over the years, how much both we and our lives have changed since we were first married, how gracious the LORD has been to us. We enjoyed being able to focus on just one another, having uninterrupted conversations where we could make one another feel important and seen and cherished, being just two. And, after cherishing these sweet moments as just two, we drove back home to our dear baby. I would not trade a night away with just my husband celebrating our marriage, but I also would not trade having our dear baby to go back home to afterward. And I think that each is sweeter for the experience of the other – I appreciate my husband (and time alone with him!) even more after having our baby, and I appreciate being with our baby even more after having a short bit of time away with just my husband.