We got married young. So young. I was 20. I could fill my entire house with all the things I thought I knew about life and love and didn’t. I wasn’t prepared. I wasn’t ready. I was scared.
Kaleb and I both come from very broken families. The soundtrack of my own playing over and over at deafening decibels in my mind. The truth: I had no idea the heartache I would endure. What was even truer: I had no idea the grace that would swallow us whole.
Our love story is not like what you see in a movie or a book. It has been filled with countless tears and many all night “working it outs”. It has been years, at times, of missing the mark over and over. It has been holding each other in heartache and pain when there was not much else to be done. And quite honestly, avoiding the other’s heartache and pain because our own was all we had room for within the selfish aching walls of our heart.
We have not seen eye to eye, sometimes for what seemed like, always. We have fought different battles at different times leaving us laying down at night next to a loneliness that separated us far more than physical distance could even try. We took turns kissing in passing and ignoring intimacy. We forgot to play for the team instead of the player. We found that kindness and doing good was the poison we gladly drank to keep from the real work of pursuing connection that couldn’t be corrupted.
I’ve spent many a year in my marriage comparing our story to those in the story books and flooding my Instagram feed. I have wept over what isn’t real. I have fumbled over the facade. I thought that’s what I craved. I thought it was given to others and I missed it along the way. I was a fool.
10 years and tons of tears in, I can say what I thought I wanted is not what I wanted. Passion is not love. I laugh at the countless times I have mistaken it for such. True love is something that comes to those who work for it. Falling in love is easy passion- staying in... is work. I have, at times, fallen prey to the lies that what is hard can’t be whole.
Our love is not easy. It is not cheap. It’s is not the most glorious or perfect. It is messy. It is sinful. It is at times, weak and frail. It has asked for everything we had to give and then asked for even more. But....
It has shown me God’s sweet grace. Kaleb is his grace on my life in human form. Our love is not easy, but it is life to me. Our love has seen me through. His love through Kaleb has pushed me on in the darkest night. Our love has wrestled me to the ground, unrelenting- pressuring me over and over to lay down myself and my own desires that I so deeply treasured.
I’ve realized in this last year, that our story is the uncommon one. It is the fairy tale. It is the one that fights till the end. Our story is one that travels through the toughest and the most trying of times and grabs the hand beside it whispering in the pain, “for better, my dear, and for worse”. Our love playing on repeat at deafening decibels for all to hear.
By his great grace, we have made it this far, and by His grace may he carry us on.
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