And yet

sometimes i stare at him as if i don't know him, and the gaze lingers inside. we're just on this side of five years and still young enough to be considered new at all this, and yet we have 3 little boys and life has stretched along with the belly and it seems forever since the sparkle was fresh and the talks lasted a million years into the night.

sometimes i fear he stares at me, unknowing who this softer, rounder, grayer version of me is, this one who has struggled with motherhood and how to be a wife, the balance undoing.

i'm reminded of meg's words, "you'll be making this harder than normal, and marriage even on its best day is still hard," and i think i know what she means.

we never had a married season of just two, of knowing and finding and beginnings. our two started out as three, and we were learning labor techniques and registering for baby goods just months after opening our bridal registry gifts.

and yet.

there is a knowing between him and me. we've known grace, and we've known forgiveness from a God as big as the cosmos, and we've seen love made three times, all look so different and form us so differently and shape how we know each other. there have been adjustments with each babe: seasons of bedsharing turned roomsharing ; the bodysharing that touches me out from little hands and a tiredness that feels eternal; his long hours spent in travel with phone calls that turn into business transactions or temper flaring because i just want him home, with me.

we have an advantage, a would-be-curse turned into blessing. we had to be on the same team, never saw it otherwise. we didn't have the years that allowed us to be intimate, just two, but we had the months to figure out that if we weren't pitching for the same team and shared all the same goal-glories, we'd never make it work. He has been kind enough to show us through many failures and mistakes on our part, that our love for each other can sustain because His love is stamped indelibly in our hearts and to veer away would be to die.


a favorite quote by antione de st.-exupery: life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction. our hearts' gaze is fixed upon the Only One who can succeed where we don't. this is the secret to making any marriage last.
please, read over at ann's and her walk with him wednesday series on marriage.