State of Our Union 2019

The last time I checked in with you all about my mawage (name that movie…), we were slowly but surely recovering from 2018.  Or, as we refer to it in my household, the Year That All the Things Sucked.  We went through several marriage counseling sessions last fall to help us sort through and process all the changes and events that had happened in our lives that summer.  You can read about our counseling sessions here, here, here, here, and here.

We haven’t gone back to our counselor since then and we are doing really great.  At the time, I really didn’t think we’d be able to recover fully.  I knew we’d recover, but I didn’t know if it would ever be like it was.  We had said a lot of things to each other and there was a lot of water flooding the bridge, so to speak.  Even if we could build the bridge back, I thought that the water level would always be… different now.

But it turns out that you can recover from a really horrible season in your marriage.  It just isn’t easy.  You have to be able to forgive, like, completely.  Like, without quantifiers or exceptions.  Without score keeping or grudge holding.

You have to be able to apologize, like, completely.  Like, without excuses or even explanations.  Without expecting anything in return and without being asked.

You have to be able to be able to let go, like, completely.  Because you can carry that heavy weight into the future with you or it will drown you both.  You have to be able to let go of inequalities and unfairness.  You have to be able to let go of hurt feelings and broken promises, of anger and resentment.  And some of that stuff is really hard to let go of.  It gets ahold of you and whispers in your ear, “Yeah, but…” until one day you yell back at it, “Yeah, but I love this man.  I love this life we have built.  I love this marriage we share.  And I love all of those things more than you.”  And sometimes it takes a counselor or therapist to help you be able to yell that back at yourself.  Sometimes it takes a counselor or therapist to help you yell at your spouse, too.  Because before you can forgive or apologize or let go, you have to be able to find a healthy voice in your marriage.  For us, that voice came from outside of ourselves in the form of a counselor.

Now, we use the strategies that we learned often and routinely in our marriage, usually without thinking or prompting, but sometimes we have to check ourselves still.  We listen better to each other.  We encourage and support each other.  We appreciate each other.  We make ourselves a priority to each other.  Mostly, though, I can tell a change in our relationship because we are laughing more with each other now and that’s important because we hadn’t laughed in quite a while together.

So, that’s the state of our union right now.  We’re walking forward, hand in hand.  And I can’t tell you how grateful I am for the healing that we have been through.  It feels good to grow towards each other again.  I am definitely better with Chris by my side.