In more than just a few days Rick and I will be celebrating 13 years of marriage. We started dating Nov. 7, 1995 and the first day I saw him was somewhere around Oct. 20th of that same year. It didn't take long even though I was really not wanting to be in a relationship at the time. Actually, the emotional and I believe, providential aspects of our meeting make those weeks between meeting and dating seem so long to me in my memory. I'm always shocked when I think back to the actual timeline because it was so short! Even after we started dating I freaked out (because honestly, he seemed too good to be true and any of you who have met Rick know that his friendliness is not the norm of today) and we backed off for two weeks. Then, he came home with me on that Thanksgiving to meet my family. It didn't help my resolve against him when my dad absolutely loved him, and my brother even more. My brother has cerebral palsy and Rick grew up with a disabled sister who has since gone to be with the Lord. My brother connected to Rick right away because Rick knew how to connect to him and made him feel like he really wanted to be his friend. I will never forget sitting in the swing hung up in the big oak tree behind my parents house, looking out at the vineyard and skyline across the street and just listening to him converse on whatever thinking in my mind "this is the man I'm going to marry". It was as if part of me was telling the other, more sceptical part of me, how it was gunna be. Well, that part was right and has sustained me still even when the sceptic in me debates.
I just broke all my own rules with Rick. Well, I should blame it on that optimistic side of me anyway! LOL! I had made two rules for myself prior to meeting Rick. I would not be the first to say "I love you", and when I did I wanted to say something more like "you are the one I want to learn to love". (No, in my relationship revolution, I did not resolve to not kiss until my wedding. May I just side tangent for a moment on this one?! I find it the most rediculious of concervative Christian practices. Every couple should have their first kiss as THEIR moment. If it's awkward, they don't care. There is no one looking on to see how perfect it is going to be. Plus, it's your first one! It should be yours alone. The first kisses I've seen at weddings, I've felt so bad for the couple and they are all EXTREMELY awkward. SO, NO, I won't be advising my children to this. If you want to wait, good, have a special date for the day before the wedding at least to have your moment. If you feel you need your parents right outside the door to confirm that was all you did ....fine. Please people! Anyway....sorry for that soapbox interlude.) It's true, I'd had some real growing experiences on how easy it was to fall in love and then have it not work out. I had come to realize the vulnerability of infatuation. I knew that the one I married would need to be a choice and that love would have to be learned more than anything. Still, my resolve went out the window. Not only did I tell him before he told me, I indeed stated "I love you". It was all good though. We were driving on a country road and just like the feeling I got on the swing a month or more before, I knew I could be content driving just about anywhere with this man and it overwhelmed me. So, in the quiet of the drive I made my declaration. I remember my stomach exploded in butterflies and I was a little mad at myself but he pulled the car over to make sure he could give me all his attention and told me he loved me too. I was days past turning 19, and he had just turned 25.
Yesterday I was at the grocery store grabbing a few things and there was an older couple ahead of me. The wife was bagging the groceries (ha, now you know where I shop) while the old gentleman stood at the atm machine waiting for the total. I started to clue in with some things he was saying, that his memory was fading and he was stepping on uncertain waters of Alzheimers perhaps. Jovial as could be though he waited patiently and then got a little concerned and asked the cashier "is that all still my stuff?". He seemed to have forgotten what he was buying and was worried he was paying for someone else's items. She gave him the total and he paid. A few seconds later as she is running the machine and waiting for the receipt he says "Do you have my card?". "No, sir, I just gave it to you", she replied. All this time the wife is not even looking up, she is bagging those groceries and leaving Mr.Jovial to fend for himself.
It was refreshing for me to see. Lately I've been at the store and noticed way to many very elderly couples lashing out at each other. Sometimes you can hear them before you can see them. "Well, I don't know, you tell me!?" I heard one day and was alerted to an old couple in the isles looking like they were going to kill each other over some trivial decision about pillows. Another time I came around the corner to hear an elderly wife just raking her old, most likely forgetful, husband for leaving his wallet at home. "You mean I came all the way out here!" Still another time I overheard a very domineering elderly husband grouching at his wife while shopping. Each time I remember thinking how miserable they seemed. Letting patterns of selfishness and sinful communication become part of their hardrives had taken over any grace for the failing years together. All I could think was that I didn't want to be that way.
With my health issues lately I have been more than ever blessed by my husbands love for me. He is no angel, (and he is not married to one) but he does all he can to love and care for me and be patient in uncertainty. It's made me realize that there are only more of those days to come in our future. Life becomes more and more about loving by choice and less and less about waiting to love when the mood hits ya. If adversity quenches love, love is doomed!
The couple at the grocery store, though I did not see them long, and I'm sure they gripe with each other at times, seemed to have learned how to flow. She did not nitpick at him, nor did she baby him or pay too much attention to his forgetful ways of handling things. She just did what she could and let him handle the rest whether he did it right or not. He didn't get grumpy with her with his little disorientations or ask her snippy demeaning questions, and he did not demand that she get up there and take care of things. There was a quiet acknowledgement of failing minds and bodies but a contentment to let it happen. More than that, there was a sense of knowing each other well and being okay with who they were.
My mom use to tell me the story of my great grandma cussing after her stroke. My mom told me not to use bad language for many reasons but one being that it will go into your default hardrive when you are older. My great grandma had a small habit of saying "shit" when things went wrong. Unfortunately for her though, after her stroke, her brain no longer controlled when she said it anymore. Mom says she would just blurt it out often and out of context. She told me then that we have to program edifying things in our minds for the reason of old age as well.
So, lately I've been thinking that that applies to an aging marriage as well. The patters you set will be the patterns you perform, even without thinking, later on in your old age. With my dad suddenly passing away at 54, I will consider myself blessed indeed to get to grow old with my husband. I've been reminded that this is not a guarantee. So many people today don't make it anywhere near the beauty of this evolving stage of marriage. They don't get to see the beauty of each stage as it comes with it's pain and beauty. They don't get to touch a depth that is there to be had with commitment. They base relationships on what will always, and without fail, fade away. Yet, even those of us who are committed should build strong blocks for our futures, Lord willing, together. Those little ticks that annoy us could be more overlooked with grace. Lately I've been literally stopping myself during these and telling myself "if he was no longer here, I would be missing this" or "this is an important aspect of HIS personality, it's not mine, it's his, and I shouldn't let it bug me". Many of these things are patterns I develop now in my response systems, reaction habits and more.
There are many unglamorous aspects about aging that will make it unavoidably unpleasant in many ways. Yet, what a great sadness to have on the heels of those unavoidables, the damage of bitterness and baggage. More than that, how lonely to travel that road alone or with one you don't really know. To have walked a journey together, evolving, changing, deepening, and growing in grace will be one of the greatest gifts we can give each other when everything else really stops working well. To be there for each other, the closest of friends, knowing each other so well and accepting each other even more, will be the magic of old age. It won't come on it's own though. In fact, I think, like a garden neglected, it will indeed digress on it's own and neither of us will have the mental or physical strength to clean it out by then. The work for such beauty starts now, keeping it simple but keeping it lovely. All washed over in grace, undeserved, but received from Christ and not kept, but poured out on the one we love.
