Like at this moment, during our vows, when we broke out giggling. I fell a bit more.
Married life, is soooo easy. Life itself? Right now? Very, very hard. We are experiencing trials that make the past year pale in comparison.
But us?
Mrs & Mr Buckeye have been very, very happy; content, even (before the brain bleed...sigh!)
We’ve discovered that marriage, despite outward circumstances being very challenging, should be easy.
It was a choice to put aside our circumstances, and let us be us. All summer they had plagued us: moves, remodels and more moves. Another house to put on the market, another sale to wait for. All that change wore on both of us, as evidenced in our wedding photos.
While delighted with the pictures-my eyes are half shut in every one. I was beyond exhausted with the stress of the prior few months.
Our mini-moon, a three-day jaunt to Vegas, was more to simply rest! We went to bed early and did little but sit by the pool.
Undeniably happy, also undeniably tired.
So returning home, I had hoped for a reprieve. Yes, his old house was still for sale, but it was completely done. I could start focusing on better things, right?
Our lives were turned upside down at 6am the day after we came home. They remain that way today, nearly four months later. Confronted with a circumstance that could easily destroy us, we vowed to cling to one another.
Three weeks in, I couldn’t do it anymore.
I began to panic.
A very good liar.
I was standing in the kitchen, putting away groceries. The circumstances had overwhelmed me, and I wanted to run. I had tried to cling, I had tried to be supportive, I had tried to be all I knew to be....and I wanted out.
I just wanted rest.
All along, I had thought it was just around the corner. Now I was discovering that life had handed me a gauntlet so intimidating I was overwhelmed just a few weeks in...and as I stood there shaking, gripping a can of tomatoes I wanted to fling across the room, I questioned again why I was where I was.
And from deep within me, the answer came; strong, clear and insistent.
“LOVE NEVER FAILS.”
In that moment, I had to chose. To chose to love, or to give in to physical weariness that was over a year in the making and to Fear, who was reminding me that when I’d chosen to love in the past, it hadn’t worked out in my favor.
I again chose love.
Despite a seventeen year history of choosing to love daily, only to have it end in a heartbreaking divorce. Despite warning signs that this new marriage had hallmarks matching the last.
I chose love because I knew the Buckeye was not the King, and that severe circumstances were testing us both. That our situation, while panic-inducing, wasn’t either of our faults.
The house sold soon after I made the choice to love; when the Buckeye utilized Open Door. Yes, he paid a service fee, but his house was sold at a fair price 30 days later. The sale relieved part of our burden, but the real relief had come much sooner.
While I chose to love, the Buckeye chose to listen.
My finished ring, two bands with rubies surrounding my sapphire. I’m happily on Caspersen Beach, and delighted in the many grains of sand peppering my hand.
He began to learn, and I began to relax. Neither of us had expected to be thrown in such a battle the day we returned home from our honeymoon. While we had done fairly well not reacting, and had not attacked each other, we had forgotten we were now partners. As I gently taught him the principles of choosing love, he was the first to see my need to heal.
Of course, there are things we will NEVER agree on...
In late October I returned from a cross-country drive to Florida; my parents decided to move there and I brought them their car while they flew. Unexpectedly, I became ill with an ear infection.
That lasted a month.
I was barely better by Thanksgiving, and thankful I could join the Buckeye on his turn as the Grinch in the Prescott Lights Parade.
After weeks of inactivity due to extreme vertigo from the infection, I was starting to feel better...
My Buckeye had, in fact, proved to be a very good nurse.
So I’m feeling better, despite the unchanged, still awful circumstances that stretched back to the day we got back from our honeymoon when...
A tackle in a game of rugby didn’t go as planned. He made the tackle, but took a knee to the forehead.
And thought he was fine.
He was not.
It was a brain bleed, and up to ICU he went.
Suddenly, our bad circumstances were compounded with a true threat to his very life.
Not certain who is more exhausted in this photo...
My Buckeye survived, and his trauma doctors told him he was very, very lucky. Given his history of concussions, this one merely landed him in ICU; it could have permanently disabled him or killed him. As is, we expect him to make a full recovery.
Still, the first two days he was home, I fought back tears. I felt like I was in a time warp; that I was dealing with my own post post-concussion syndrome. I knew what was coming: the mood swings, the irrational anger and the mourning of the loss of life once lead. While I recognized the fact I was exhausted, it was still hard not to give in. Why were we being hit with another huge blow? I struggled to keep in front of me the Buckeye’s survival. All I could see were the broken dreams; the trials and the disappointments.
And yet?
It was so easy to encourage him. It was so easy to believe that he would have a full recovery, and we would be ok.
He couldn’t do anything for two weeks...but our sweet dog Lucy is by his side (as am I.)
Oh, he’s had his moments. I’ve had my moments. It’s a struggle in many ways: the recovery, our circumstances still unchanged and then little things piled on top. An injured foot, an unpaid bill, doctors with no open appointments for two months. Worries about so many things...
And yet....
It’s still easy.
It’s easy to rest my head on his shoulder and hear his heartbeat. It’s easy to say, “it’s going to be ok,” and it’s easy to listen to him saying the same...and believing it.
We have a road together that has been a horrible, terrible ride since the day we came home...and yet, we are finding joy. We are finding love. We are finding that in our choice to cling to one another, we are being knit together with ties much stronger than either of us have ever known.
No, it’s not supposed to be this hard...but the fact we are finding it easy to be partners in it?
That’s exactly how it’s supposed to be.
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