Marriage is a Dirty Business

It’s the middle of the night as I write this. I just finished changing a bed and starting a load of laundry, while my wife is finishing bathing a child. This makes the 6th child to get sick in as many nights. Not every night was spent awake tending to crying and vomit and other loveliness. Some nights we had a reprieve, but it seems like we were doubled up on the next. Sometimes the kids managed to time it perfectly, with ‘activity’ in two different beds at the same time. Other nights, they organized their illnesses in succession, with the 2nd starting only after we’d managed to fall back asleep from dealing with the 1st.

The older kids are easier. They are well rehearsed, and keep themselves quarantined to help cut down on the contagious spread. The oldest of the bunch, a true pro, has managed to avoid the latest outbreak. He has spent the past week walking around the house with his shirt pulled up over his face like a mask.

As for my beautiful wife and I, we are experts. This is the third consecutive year we’ve started Christmas break with illnesses. At the first hint of the familiar not-quite-coughing sound, we emerge from our sleep, spring out of bed, and go into action. One cleans the patient, while the other sterilizes the surroundings. We have experienced this a thousand times over our marriage, thanks in great part to a multi-year stint where the side effects of chemotherapy treatments caused the sicknesses in one of our children. Now, with kids in four different schools, any bug that is floating around town will be brought into our home. We are certainly not martyrs, as I’m sure many of you can relate to similar experiences.

Remembering back, we were the first of our friends to get married. The first to have a child. The first to buy a house. During the early years of our marriage, they often asked, “How do you do it?” With house and cars and kids, the American Dream was supposedly in hand. I assumed they thought we had it all figured out. I felt compelled to share our ‘vast wisdom’. As they started getting married, I tried to come up with clever advice to give about marriage…about love. Concentrating on some romanticized version, and forgetting the reality. Trying to write something short and memorable, like you might see on a Hallmark card.

The reality? Marriage is hard work. Love? It is a conscious effort. Emotion and feeling are something different, and can easily be ascribed to a favorite pet dog, or can be experienced watching an exciting football game. The word ‘love’ flies around too often. But maybe it should. Maybe it needs to. We just need to use it correctly, and not attribute it to lesser things.

When I get home and see my wife exhausted from a hectic day…When she sees me becoming overwhelmed by the stresses of work and finances…At those times, how do we Not tell each other we’re proud and thankful for everything they do? How do we Not step up, and help with the kids? How do we Not allow the statement “I LOVE YOU” to fly from our lips freely and often?

As my wife slips into bed besides me, she has a radiant glow about her. Her hair is disheveled. She is wearing an old pair of glasses. Her clothes are mismatched. And she has the aroma of Lysol. I love her. Not because of a fleeting emotion, or even because of what she just did for my child, or what she has done for me over the years. I love her because…I do. She is more beautiful than the day we first met. She has added the look of a mother. The look of wisdom, caring, and self-giving love. The same look Mary certainly had, when blessed with Jesus.

I think of the Holy Family at this time, 2,000 years ago. All of the nativity scenes are cleansed, romanticized versions of what likely happened. After all, Jesus was born in a manger. In a barn. Have you ever been in a barn…smelled a barn? Mary rode a donkey to Bethlehem on dusty roads. Joseph was required to take his pregnant wife on this journey, or risk punishment under Roman law. The shepherds who visited had been sleeping in their camp outside. Think about your last camping trip and how you looked. Certainly not an ideal scenario or quite the scene we normally imagine. But it was somehow beautiful and glorious none-the-less.

Why did Mary and Joseph agree to go through with that? Why did they say Yes to God? Yes to each other? It’s like trying to explain why we have faith. Why we believe. Why we trust in God ourselves. There are many beautifully worded answers, and many quotes of advice (each one worthy of a Hallmark card.) But when you really push, when you really dig; I don’t know if words can ever express the fullness of that mystery, and the beauty of the true answer.

Why do you believe? We just DO. When we look at each other, and our children, and friends and family surrounding us, how could you Not believe? Amidst the sickness and the troubles and the difficulties (and smells) of life, there is no profound single answer we can share. We have no great advice. We have fallen many times. After many discussions, and arguments, and struggles over the years, no words between us have been exchanged that would be earth shattering.

There were words at the beginning of our marriage, however, that set the foundation for our commitment as strongly as any words since. We believe in them fully, and we’ve had those words tested many times. They were exchanged nearly two decades ago. They have to do with How and Why and When we love each other…in sickness and in health…good times and bad…richer and poorer…

This is such a wonderful, yet stressful time of year. Whether you’re dealing with sick kids, or you’re 9 months pregnant and being forced to travel, or you can’t find any available hotel rooms, or your insurance will only cover one night in the manger…I pray you are able to see through to the things that really matter. It may be hard, and sometimes seem impossible, but when you say ‘yes’ to God, you WILL get through.

I pray that you have a wonderful Christmas with your spouse and all those you love, and that you feel God’s loving embrace through them in return!


-written by Matt Buehrig, inspired by Wendy Buehrig

The Missing Piece

I read with interest Kate’s “A New Perspective” post from last week, paying special attention to her description of her husband Mike as her “soul mate.”  The idea that we are somehow mystically joined to another human being and do not feel fully complete until we find him or her might sound overly romantic to our 21^st century ears and a little bit like a classic script for a movie of the week on the Oxygen channel.  It definitely sets the bar dangerously high as a descriptor for the relationship between my husband and me on those days when there are too many diapers, debts, and dirty dishes.  Nothing mystical happening there!

Or is there more to it than meets the eye?  You only need to get a few pages into scripture to discover that there is, indeed, something much more powerful happening in a marriage than a business partnership to share household duties.  In Genesis 2, God creates Adam out of the dust of the earth and breathes life into him.  Adam is lonely, so God creates the animals one by one and brings them to the first man to see if any one of them is a suitable companion.  But Adam’s heart is not satisfied until God creates Eve.  And this is the part of the story that I find really interesting…

When God decides to create a partner for Adam, He doesn't shape a creature out of the dust in the same way He did with Adam. Instead, the Creator uses Adam’s rib as the primary building block of this new creature.  There’s got to be something pretty important about this!  If you think about it logically, God already had a ready-made blueprint for creating a human.  It would have been easy for God to just kneel right down and create another human out of the dust. But – he doesn't.  God didn't need Adam’s rib as raw material to get a person started, but instead He must have used it intentionally to show us something.  When I close my eyes and imagine the creation of Eve, I can’t help but think that it is suggesting that we are made to be in relationship with each other.  I love the idea that I have a little piece of my husband, Tim, is in me and that until he found that piece, there was always something a bit missing from his life (and vice-versa, of course!).

Every year, our family vacations at a resort where we have family-style Olympics.  In one of the games, boys and girls are separated by gender and blind-folded.  Each participant has an animal name whispered into his or her ear.  Then, at the sound of the whistle, everyone begins making the noise of the animal until you find the other person who is making the same animal sound.  It’s funny to watch everyone stumbling around aimlessly until they find their mate.  Then they join hands, rip off their blind-folds, and proudly proclaim VICTORY!  This isn’t so much unlike our path in life.  We stumble along, hoping to find someone who speaks the same language we do…who sings the same song…who has the same hopes, dreams and ideals.  When we find them, the blinders come off and we can see.  And if we are really lucky, we are able to proclaim VICTORY!

Most importantly, we aren't walking along aimlessly anymore.  We are sharing our path with the person who heard the same word when God gently whispered.  For my part, I am blessed that God whispered the same word into my husband Tim’s ear.  On days when the daily tasks of life seem to overwhelm, thinking of Tim as my soul-mate brings me back to the best version of myself, and I remember that I am living a life that is deeper and richer than it sometimes seems on the surface.  I am on a holy journey with my soul mate and no matter what our destination, the fact that we will go there together – with God as our traveling companion - helps me recognize even ordinary moments as sacred.  I wish the same for you, in your marriage!

Jeannie and Tim Steenberge

A New Perspective

I was surprised to be asked to contribute to this blog and questioned what I could possibly say to married couples when I am no longer married. I was widowed over four years ago, after 24 years of marriage. As I thought about what I could say, one thought kept coming to mind; what do I know now that I wish I knew/understood while I was married?

Great loss brings a new perspective and appreciation, lessons I wish I had learned without suffering a loss. I was blessed to be in a very strong marriage, and it was not until after I lost my husband that I began to realize just how much Mike and I completed and complemented each other. Together we formed a blending of our hearts and souls into our joint identity where “two become one.” We had become one, and I did not know it until half of our oneness was ripped away and I had to learn to live without half of me. I did not just lose my husband, I lost my soul mate, the person who made me better, my identity and the vocation God had called me to. As much as I thought I appreciated what I had in Mike and in our marriage, I did not until I lost him. Even with a two year battle with ALS and Mike’s mortality hanging over us like a countdown timer, I did not appreciate or even comprehend how much our souls and hearts had meshed together during 24 years of marriage until he was gone.

As you read this, stop and think about your spouse for a little bit. Think about how he/she complements you, how he/she makes you a better person, who sees you at your worst and best and loves you regardless, how he/she knows and understands you better than anyone else and how you both have become one. Please, do not take it for granted what you have in your spouse. God has given you a precious gift. Love, cherish and appreciate every second of every day with that gift, your spouse.

There is so much truth in, “You don’t realize what you have until you lose it” and my prayer for married couples this Christmas is that it will not take loss through death or divorce for a couple to realize what a precious God given gift they have in each other.

Kate Treese