True Love is Freedom

A few weeks ago, during a classic marital spat, my husband thought to inform me that I shouldn't use PMS as a crutch for my grumpiness.  His words, "a crutch," not mine, as if I was relying on hormones to be my get out of jail free card for nagging him.  I cleverly responded that rather he should not be so quick to point out that he typically takes advantage of my tolerance levels, and that perhaps Mother Nature only draws upon the flaws of his that I more regularly overlook.  Either way, he still had to take out the trash and rub my feet.

Ahh, isn't marriage grand?

It can commonly be a battle of wills or a competition of matching wits.  Sometimes there are disagreements, and other times there are fights.  Good days and bad days, we all have them, and not every husband and wife team can realistically cheer each other up whenever a storm sets in.  In fact, not every husband and wife can be a team; I imagine there are happily married people out there who argue more than they get along, but somehow it works for them, and I say, to each his or her own!

Yeah, well, not really.

A little over 3 years into my marriage, once again I am writing about a topic of which I am no expert.  Regardless, my experience so far has been less than storybook.  Getting engaged the day your future husband loses his job, and finding out you are pregnant 3 days after he was laid off a 2nd time tends to make these kinds of life changing moments bittersweet, and the aftertaste can be brutal.  Still we got married, and still we have our son, but the journey of our marriage to this point has been about survival, not wedded bliss, and I believe we are stronger in our relationship because of it.

In the same year (2008) we tied the knot, we attended 3 other weddings; 2 of them ended less than a year later.  These are people we know; these people are our friends!  Not strangers or future Jerry Springer guests.  The year our son was born (2009) we attended 4 weddings; one of them ended in less than 2 months and another was already a 2nd marriage for the bride.  Based solely on these numbers, the odds are not looking good.

So why do I feel with 100% certainty that my marriage will not fail when I know none of those other people got married thinking theirs would either?  I honestly do not have an answer for that question.  I just do.  I suppose I have a little more life experience than some of the examples above, and maybe that gives me some sort of mature insight that helps my marriage along, but truthfully, who really knows what the future will bring? How can any of us ever predict the future?  Isn't it always just a gut feeling?  An instinct?  Or maybe just a leap of faith?

I think about my husband, all that he is, all that he does for our family.  I think of him as a friend to others, as a  brother to his, as a son, an uncle, a basic human being.  And I think of him as a lover, best friend, and most importantly as a father to our child.  All of those things make him into the husband that he is, a wonderful, loving, kind-hearted, compassionate, strong-willed, protective, easy-going, sensitive, funny and proud man.  

So a little PMS joke here and there is a small price to pay for a perfect marriage.  Or rather I guess it is perfectly imperfect, seeing as how we cope with and handle the imperfections is really what makes us perfect for each other.  And we have had a tough road, with bumps and bruises and flat out falling on our faces, but we pick ourselves and each other up and keep going, never doubting our love for each other, and always 100% committed to our family.  That's not to say we don't fight, BIG fights, little fights, everything in between fights...b/c Lord knows we have them, but sometimes those moments are exactly the kind that remind us what we have together: unconditional love.  

Someone once told me: 

"True love is freedom."  

I've spent many years pondering that thought, analyzing it upside down and backwards, evaluating its meaning in each relationship I've had along the way, and forcing it to apply when perhaps it really didn't.  I've repeated it over and over, emphasizing each word in the sentence separately, hoping maybe one manipulation of it would bring clarity and a sense of understanding to me, opening me up to really comprehend and somehow connect with it in a way that would confirm I was both in a true love and free...when clearly, looking back, I wasn't...time and time again.  That was then.

This is now.  True love is freedom.  It is a basic statement, and stressing one word in the phrase does not alter its meaning, but rather it just confirms it.  Try it.  True love is freedom.  True love is freedom.  True love is freedom.  True love is freedom.  See?

My husband lets me be me.  That is true love; that is freedom.  I am free to grow, to bloom, to change, to feel; I am not confined to one way of life or a single pattern of thinking.  I can spread my wings and explore the world both outside around me and inside my head, knowing that when I want to land safely, comfortably, securely, I can.  It is that simple.  I can be me.

And perhaps knowing that is all it takes to keep me grounded.  Maybe THAT is the answer to the original question of "why do I feel with 100% certainty that my marriage will not fail?"  We give each other freedom, and that makes ours a true love, one that will not falter, one that cannot be broken, one that will never fail, no matter what challenges we face or storms we weather or how we change as individuals along the way.

I started this piece many weeks ago (June 13th actually), and little by little I've added to it, squeezing in a few minutes to write here and there, mostly when the family is sleeping.  I was going to start a new post this morning about another chapter in our lives beginning, but then I clicked on this one, unfinished, and it just called to me for completion.  I'm pretty sure if I had tried to end it before, just to get it out of the way, that it wouldn't have gone in the direction it did, and so I am thankful for all the interruptions throughout its composition b/c I truly believe in its message, and I have found some comfort in reminding myself once again what I have in my amazing husband.

True love.  And freedom.  

Thanks, baby.