Do Not Let Them Tell You There is No Sweetness in Sameness

Do not let them tell you there is no sweetness in sameness. Do not listen when they say that passion dies in practicality. Do not believe it when you hear that after marriage, there is only monotony.

Every night you sleep beneath the same sky, the same stars have been burning for 10 million years. Are they still breathtaking? Do you still look up in wonder, every time?

But marriage IS hard work. We should not be afraid to talk about the hard labor of love.

After the vows are said, after the kiss and the presents and the party, we resign ourselves to speak about our love in absolutes. "How is married life?" someone asks us and we quickly learn to banish the hesitation and uncertainty in our voice. "Wonderful," we tell them, because this is what people want to hear.

But it is not always "Wonderful” Sometimes sharing our lives, our space, our bed is very, very hard.

Why does it feel so scary to admit that it takes effort to entwine another person’s happiness with your own?

The work of love is unseen, and heavy. And it is okay that you are tired. It is okay that you do not always like it. This does not mean you are doing it wrong, that it is not right. This does not make your marriage a mistake.

It only makes your marriage honest.

The breadth of love is unseen, too. But it is still there, reaching up around while you do the dishes at the kitchen sink, as a Rolling Stones record plays in the next room. It is calling you from a parking lot in Ohio. It is a billowing cloud of cream in your coffee cup and the heavy creak of two people, side by side, on your very own front porch swing. Sometimes it is two bodies, frantic, pressed against each other in the night. Sometimes it is a hot plate of food, waiting on the table. If it is good, when it is worthy, married love is kind, forgiving and constant---it cares for us when we do not care for ourselves.

My tired husband speaks words of gratitude as we lay in bed, our legs tangled up together, near midnight on a school night. After the meetings have ended, after the dishes are cleared and the homework is checked, after we have argued over irrelevant and minute details and waged invisible wars about dry cleaning and groceries and all the needs and wants and desires that have been left unmet.

After the shadows of the day fade and the morning sits like a heavy curtain on the window, he whispers half asleep, with a voice as long and wide and enveloping as the sky. "I still feel like the luckiest man in the world to come home to you."

Marriage is work. Forever is a very long time. But think about the stars. They do not fall to the ground every time it storms.

If daylight comes and doubt starts to shake the tree of your worry, remember that it is constancy that pins the sky--your world--together.

Hold her hand. Stretch one leg across the cool sheet, in the dark bed, until you find him, there. There is nothing more to feel. You don't have to figure it out now.

Forever is a wonderful, long time. You can rest awhile. But do not forget to look up.

You can find brightness all around, if you only remember where to search for it.