Anniversary

Gabe and I celebrate our 4th wedding anniversary today, June 11th.

We stand today, thick in child-rearing and home-building. Not a man and a woman. A man, a woman, a boy and a girl. Four years and a family.
Our marriage is young, already we are strained. We come together in worship once a week.
We speak His name daily. But, we do not pray as we should, nor repent and ask for forgiveness as we should, from each other or from God. We do not seek God, rely upon and lean on Him the way we should. We each struggle, over-burdened, trying to shoulder our load alone, so as not to lay more upon the other. It is not easy and our marriage is young.

Sometimes, it feels as if our relationship is ruled by and exists solely for providing for and protecting the boy and the girl. Who are we apart from the little people who come between us and always before us? Who are we when we are not climbed upon, clamored over? When we do not have to beg the boy to let us speak, or pry the girl from my breast, when we are just Gabe and Liz.

(And obviously, we love the boy and the girl more than words can tell and do not for a minute wish that they would grow and leave us any faster than they already are. No, not for one minute. We savor them.)

But, I do look with wonder towards the days when Gabe and I will have the space and the freedom to explore again who we are, not as Mommy/Daddy, but as man and woman.

I love and am in-love with Gabe. He is my man, my good husband, father of my children, provider, protector, friend and lover. The desire of my heart is to always honor what we vowed to protect and preserve: our love, our unity. I want our marriage to last, to outlast. To outlast the sleeplessness nights, the years of building-- career, family, home. To outlast the doubts and the fears, the pettiness and pet peeves. If we promise to maintain for the sake of the children only...

What will be on the other side of child raising? When the young ones are grown and gone... will we have built a solid love, proven and tested, ready for anything? Or will we be left, two people, lonely, together for the sake of pretense, bitter and angry? What can we do now to promise that we will be solid, stronger, even more in love when it is just 'Gabe and Liz', a man and a woman, again?

I wonder these things as we celebrate what feels like the fastest, most meaningful and fulfilling and yes, challenging, 4 years of my life.

I end this rambler with the poem The Man Moves Earth by Cathy Song:

The man moves earth
to dispel grief.
He digs holes
the size of cars.
In proportion to what is taken
what is given multiplies—
rain-swollen ponds
and dirt mounds
rooted with flame-tipped flowers.
He carries trees like children
struggling to be set down.
Trees that have lived
out their lives,
he cuts and stacks
like loaves of bread
which he will feed the fire.
The green smoke sweetens
his house.

The woman sweeps air
to banish sadness.
She dusts floors,
polishes objects
made of clay and wood.
In proportion to what is taken
what is given multiplies—
the task of something
else to clean.
Gleaming appliances
beg to be smudged,
breathed upon by small children
and large animals
flicking out hope
as she whirls by,
flap of tongue,
scratch of paw,
sweetly reminding her.

The man moves earth,
the woman sweeps air.
Together they pull water
out of the other,
pull with the muscular
ache of the living,
hauling from the deep
well of the body
the rain-swollen,
the flame-tipped,
the milk-fed—
all that cycles
through lives moving,
lives sweeping, water
circulating between them
like breath,
drawn out of leaves by light.