Without hesitation, this is what I responded:
Marrying my husband. My role as a wife has been the most challenging and rewarding experience of my life, different from my role as a mother. I am (for lack of better words) biologically wired to love and protect my children. This is not true for Yosi (my husband), who is the best person I know. The responsibility of being fiercely committed to my marriage has shaped my identity in ways I’m very proud of.
I sent off my reply to my buddy and went about my day. As I meandered through my list of to-dos I kept coming back to the last sentence. The responsibility of being fiercely committed to my marriage has shaped my identity in ways I’m very proud of. Whoa.
We married young, Yosi and I. We were in our teens with a toddler in tow when we said “I do.” Those first years of our marriage felt like playing house. That’s nice talk for: we were lazy with each other. We lived in the same space, slept in the same bed, enjoyed each other’s company, but we were not in it. It was not until we hit a rough patch, an inevitable bump in the road, that we realized the blaring truth that our marriage was lacking in a major way. With great humility I realized that it was me who was lacking. I was missing the depth of commitment, devotion, and selflessness required to build a healthy union. So I dug in, and fought hard. I lived and breathed by the mantra “Love is a choice. Love is a verb.” And it was through that energy that I harnessed the power of unconditional love that fuels us today.
It’s been many years now since we have found our stride as a married couple and I’d be lying if I told you it has gotten easier. My values as a wife have gotten clearer, and I’ve certainly gotten better at embodying them, but it is still very much an active choice I make each day to love my husband unconditionally. To give him the best of who I am, to collaborate to raise our children, and to have some god damn fun once in a while, are all choices we make together over and over again.
In this season of our lives, we are knee deep in the weeds of parenting. Our kids right now are demanding more active parenting than they’ve needed in seasons past. We’re tired. The hands-on requirements of our crawling, cruising, teething daughter leave us both physically worn. Then we have the boys. The school-aged, friend-making, soccer-playing boys are the heartbeat of our home. Nolan, at six years old, is a persistent learner. He asks questions from the moment his eyes meet the new day until his curly head finds his pillow at night. And Christian is nine going on fifteen. He is finding his footing as an independent young person with a fervor that draws on every ounce of parenting energy we have. We’re giving ourselves, wholly, to our sweet babes these days and it’s not leaving us with much to give each other.
We’re keeping our heads above water the only way we know how, and it’d be easy for us to lose touch with each other. But we are still choosing to be fiercely committed to each other, the love we have cultivated, and the foundation on which our family is built. On a good day it looks like a check-in text to see how the other is doing or maybe a game of uno after bedtime. Oftentimes though, it is less formal than that. It’s making him coffee while the house is still dark as I fumble to get dressed and out the door before the sun comes up. Or it’s him taking a turn to rock the baby at midnight so I can sleep awhile. Somedays all I have left is finding his eyes with mine and telling him with my whole heart, “I see you, and I love you.”
This season of our love story looks mostly like hard work, but through it all I’ll be here by his side, ruthlessly devoted to us.
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