Falling Together

About a week ago there was a post on one of my favorite blogs, A Practical Wedding, about a couple who had lost a premature baby in their first year of marriage. The post was about the grief they experienced and how the handled it as husband and wife. Even though it was about about the death of a child, the message was really appropriate for getting through any challenges together.

"There is a saying about how we don’t tend to trip on boulders, but pebbles give us a hell of a time... I think it applies to marriages also. We got through the hospital stay and the funeral and swallowed “the big picture” whole. It’s been the fallout post-funeral... pebbles in comparison and we’re tripping all over ourselves. Fumbling as we may be, we are living our vows. We are partners. We keep reaching for one another and while that sounds sort of duh, I’m reminded constantly of my previous marriage in which that wasn’t the case. Jared and I might be falling, but we are falling together. As we look towards the future, we are building together.

So much of marriage is simply a negotiation of each other’s baggage. Sometimes it is messy and we peer warily at it around corners, one eye squeezed shut. Sometimes it strikes out like Medusa and turns those we love into stone. Our baggage has marched loudly across our bed this first year; a cacophony of timpanis pounding, horns cascading, flutes parading and our only recourse is living honestly and the willingness to keep reaching for one another."

So true.