Tough Love

This is a continuation of adjusting the blog to reflect me and mine more. I’m quite sure my most recent post has shocked some people, offended some people, and made some people leave. I won’t lie – I am still waffling on how I feel about all that (feelings range from “Well tough poop its my blog” to “Oh God what have I done” to “Can I now avoid people for the next half century?”).

I’m sure y’all have opinions on whether or not I should be opening up this box of well…stuff…about me, myself, and mine as well as my marriage. I’m quite sure there are family members reading this who will proceed to call other people and say things about me and what they think I OUGHT to do. (Yes I do hear about those calls.) It’s not that I don’t care, I do…I struggle with what to do, but the reality is though, I need this. So I can heal. I’m sorry if you don’t like my method – here is the quick way to fix it. Stop reading.

Have you ever seen gold refined? Gold starts out as this hunk of rock with the good parts woven through the “bad” parts that are not needed. Step one is always smelting – basically you heat up the rock and ore literally burning off the bad parts before reducing the now boiling pile of goo into something better. Refining though is where the good becomes best. Its how you get wedding bands made of 14K gold. Refining takes that ore and makes into its purest and best composition so that it can truly shine. Just like the wedding bands on mine and Alex’s hands. I like to think that this is what this last year has been about…refining us. We were smelted and we were pretty good, but we weren’t our best. Far from it. So the flames of challenge and hellashish moments took a chance where we’d either burn away or come out from the other side being stronger, better, and so much more precious than we were before the process began. I think we came out as gold.

Love is damn tough. Love is damn draining. Love is bigger than your wants, your needs, your feelings. Love is giving it all when you feel like there is nothing left to give because you should. At least that is how I was raised so to me that answers the #1 question I was asked. “Why did you stay?” Because I love him. Because I promised for better or worse. Because as tough as it is to swallow, as tough as it is to hear the marriage didn’t get crappy due to one person. BOTH of us could have been better people and damn it all to hell if I was going to let that B*!%$ win without a freaking fight.

In simpler terms – I was too pissed and stubborn to say “Fuck it.”

I also had to know in my heart of hearts that no matter what happened I gave it my  all. A year down the road and there are still days of struggle. We just got back from a GREAT vacation. It was an amazing time of happiness, togetherness, and love. The drive home was full of laughter, but the last 30 minutes practically had me in tears.

One of the comments I got was that my husband didn’t epitomize a GODLY marriage and that kind of threw me for a loop. Did marriage mean perfection? Did marriage mean the minute something bad happened you walked away? I remember reflecting on this and realizing that quite frankly Alex and I were a damn GOOD example of a Godly marriage.

God did not give up on you when you stumbled or disobeyed his commands, instead he gave you chance after chance. Even when he knew there was no way we could achieve grace on our own he did not turn away, rather he sent his  SON to DIE for OUR sins. That same son spent time on earth in the company of the very worst sinners, not turning away but loving and forgiving and then saving them the same as he saved you or I. He was AGAPE.

Yes I choose to stay. Some of the reasons are selfish, some are perhaps silly, but others are quite simply love. When you truly dearly love someone you risk it all. You never know what you may get, but love is worth the price. I’m lucky – love brought me a better marriage then I ever could have expected despite the tough times.