20 Years: A Marriage Worth Fighting For

Twenty years ago this week, we became a family.

And what a long twenty years it has been.

I do not say that to dissuade anyone from the vocation of marriage.  Marriage is beautiful and truly the best thing that ever happened to me. I prayed for it for years before meeting my husband.  I prayed for God to lead me to just the right man, the one meant for me.  He answered those prayers, and His grace has sustained us through these two decades.  But these twenty years, they have been long, and difficult, and our marriage has barely survived some of it.

It all started well enough.  We were both in our early 30s, both never married, both well-educated, financially secure, and more importantly, kind, considerate and responsible young adults.  We both loved birdwatching, camping, hiking, and music. We loved good conversation about a range of topics and would talk for hours.  We loved creative writing, and composed hundreds of poetic, romantic emails to one another that greeted us each morning as we started and ended our days in different time zones, half-a-world apart.  We loved to travel, and every opportunity to be together was a great adventure, either in the Australian bush, or in the forests of Appalachia.  We took naps on the beach, and hikes in the snow, and eight months after we met, he proposed.  I couldn’t wait to say yes.

We thought our families would be happy for us, but the news was met with lukewarm acceptance. Nonetheless, we moved forward with our plans.  We met with my parish priest, who took an immediate liking to my future husband.  We set the date.  October 13, six months to the day that he’d proposed to me. Lucky 13, we always said.

Yet, a cloud hung over our plans.  My father would not bless our marriage.  He was not pleased that I was planning to marry a non-Christian.  My husband’s father, in turn, was not happy that I was a Catholic.  Words were said, but hearts would not change. We dug in our heels, more determined than ever to get married and show our parents how wrong they were.  My father walked me down the aisle with a long face, and my husband’s parents struggled to smile.  In hindsight, I can understand why.

We were unequally yoked, he and I, and the struggles began almost immediately.  Neither of us had a frame of reference of what a healthy, Christian marriage looked like.  Soon after the honeymoon, the life changes started coming hard and fast.  First, a move to a new state, new jobs for both of us, and then, infertility.  Years and years of infertility, losing our first baby in miscarriage, and lies.  Lots and lots of little lies.  Marriage was rapidly becoming my worst nightmare. 

Yet, somewhere in there, God poured His grace.  Never one to miss Mass, I went every Sunday and holy day and my non-Christian husband went with me, every time.  It was the only thing my father had asked of him before we married.  “Promise me you’ll go to church with her,” he’d said, and my husband promised, and he did.  Three years into our marriage, he joined the Catholic Church.  One year after that, we were at Retrouvaille, seeking help.  The closer you get to Jesus, the harder Satan comes after you, and little did we know then just how much he wanted to destroy what we were trying to build. 

Things did not get better.  They got harder.  I realize now, years later, that I was making them harder.  Always seeking perfection in myself and in him, I was seldom satisfied.   Now of the same faith, we still practiced it only minimally together outside of going to Mass.  And although we could still find joy in our common hobbies and travels together, the day-to-day mundane tasks were tearing our relationship apart.  I was convinced that having children together would bring us closer, but when the children finally came after a tumultuous nine years, the strain of parenting children with challenges added a whole new layer of burden to our already tenuous marriage.  Each of us dealt with it in our own way, and rather than leaning on one another, we instead used one another as a dumping ground for each other’s brokenness and frustrations.  Trust eroded, and Satan whispered in our ears.

It was in desperation that I began saying a daily rosary for our marriage, with the specific intention that I would grow in humility.  I had rarely prayed the rosary before that.  For months after I began, nothing improved.  I went to confession more frequently, as did he, but still, little changed.  I kept it up.  Three months later, I asked him to join me in a daily rosary, and he agreed, but only if we included the kids as well.  So, we did, and life got even harder.  The kids hated saying the rosary and every evening, we faced an exhausting, uphill battle when we’d try to gather them on the sofa.  So many of our rosaries were said badly, and it often took an hour to complete one, if we completed it at all.  There was no doubt in my mind that something or Someone was doing all he could to break us from this most powerful devotion.

But although we had many setbacks, we did not stop.  And while I cannot put my finger on the moment when everything changed, I can assure you that things did change.  This month, on October 7, we celebrated the Feast of Our Lady of the Holy Rosary, and my family, joined by our parish priest, sat around the kitchen table and said a most beautiful rosary together with prayerful intentions.  Our children now look forward to snuggles on the sofa while we pray the rosary together, and my husband leads them with enthusiasm.  

Slowly, our marriage is healing.  We take walks together. We have loving conversations again. We try to do small things for one another during the day without complaint.  I try to be more accepting, less anxious, and search for humility when I want to be judgmental.  This past week, he gave me a new pair of binoculars for an anniversary gift because mine have been broken for years, and he said his missed his “birding buddy.”  Last Sunday, we went on a 24 hour get-away, just the two of us, and he made all the reservations.  For the first time in a very long time, we are back where we started, twenty years ago.  We are falling in love.  

Satan is far from finished with us, we know.  Our old wounds routinely get re-opened, and it is still too easy for us to succumb to our lower nature and the temptation to run away to a place where we can lick our own wounds. Pride still looms large over our relationship and colors our conversations on a daily basis.  Yet, despite that, we are doing one thing differently.  Now, we hold hands with one hand and keep a rosary in the other, and are fighting together for a marriage worth saving.

In five more years, we will be celebrating, Lord willing, our Silver Jubilee, and I am already planning it.  We will stand at the same altar with the same priest and renew our vows.  Our sons will stand beside their father as his best men, and witness their parents publicly profess their love and commitment for one another.  It will be much like it was the first time, only much different in a most important way.  This second time, we will receive the Eucharist together at a matrimonial Mass offered just for us, and our union will be sacramental and holy and the way it should have been to start with.  I might even ask my father to walk me down the aisle again, and should he agree, I have no doubt that this time, he will be smiling. 

As a father has compassion on his children, 

so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him. – Psalm 103