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what marriage counseling taught me...lesson #5


The journey for us started 21 months ago. It has been one of the best gifts that we have ever given ourselves. We’ve grown in ways that we only imagined before and can honestly say that our marriage is stronger, deeper, and better than ever before. We are living in the best, that elusive place we longed for.

I don’t mind sharing our journey with all of you. Sooner or later, all of the pieces of my life make it into these pages. This post is one of those pieces that I’ve kept to myself and my close others for awhile. This part of our journey has been mine alone.

...

5 sessions in and I knew. We couldn’t continue until I found some healing. What I was searching for with us - a whole, healthy relationship - was being hindered by my own brokenness. I was dragging every piece of my shattered life, from childhood on, into this marriage and expecting...

...Expecting him to fix me, to fix all the tarnished and busted parts; to climb down from his white horse, in his shiny armor, and be the savior I have always seen him as. seriously. When I relay the story of our beginning, I often say that he saved me. saved me from a life of being less than my best self. from drugs and drinking and bad choices. from my self.

I took all of the baggage that I was carrying and I threw it right up there on his horse, not caring that it got all over him in the process, not caring that it was too heavy, that he would buckle and bend under that formidable weight, not caring that it was mine, that he should never, ever, have had to struggle with my shit.

He is such a good man. always has been. He willingly took all of it in the name of love because, sometimes, we all have a warped sense of what love is. And so, for 25 years, he endured, he carried both his stuff and mine, he kept a forward momentum the best that he could, for both of us. He had his own breaking points and not once did I ever consider that the load was too heavy, too much, not even when he stumbled. I just kept expecting...

...Expecting him to fix himself, the pieces of him that I thought needed adjusted, mended, because I was tired of walking this self-help path alone. I was starting to take my luggage back, to give it a thorough going through, to sort and label and heal. It felt scary and painful and lonely. I felt lonely. and I wanted someone who could empathize, maybe even sympathize. I started going through his luggage, trying to unpack his stuff, pointing out how helpful it would be, how helpful I was being.

Here’s the thing though. He didn’t want to unpack. He didn’t see his baggage as a burden. Hell, he doesn’t even see it as baggage! Life has happened to him, and it has tarnished and broken him, and he has dealt with that in a completely different way. And, I am learning that that is okay. We all heal in our own ways. I cannot be his healer and I no longer expect him to be mine.

I understand that I have a lot of wounds, ones that came years before him, and some that have come since. It's okay to let them bleed while the healing happens. It is not okay to bleed on him. It is not okay to expect that he would be okay with that. And it is not okay to let the bloodiness effect us.
...

That session, a year and a half ago, was just the beginning of a realization that I had a lot of my own work to do if I wanted our joint work to flourish. We still check in together every four months or so, but the bulk of our “marriage” counseling has been my own personal counseling.

I think that the lesson I learned was that a marriage isn’t as “one” as I first believed. It is two very separate, very different people deciding to do life together, side by side. It is me being me the best that I can and him being him the best that he can. And it is not our job to judge what that best looks like. We just simply decide if that best is something that we can live with and be a part of.

Right now, in this spot of the road I’m on, that is my definition of grace. It is knowing that there have been, and will be, times that my best is absolutely the worst, and yet he still chooses to do this thing called life with me. He gives me grace to not be at my best and loves me still. And I do the same for him. And somewhere in there, love is covering all of it.




Good. Better. Best
Love covers it all and grace fills in the cracks ~lesson #5




You can read our marriage counseling journey here:
lesson 1
lesson 2 
lesson 3 
lesson 4










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