Different Roles for Spouses

Tomorrow I scheduled a vacation day at work.  Unfortunately, I won’t be spending the day doing anything fun.  I will be at the hospital with my daughter.  She has surgery scheduled.  Usually that statement is followed by many well-wishes, offers for prayers, concerned looks, prying questions, and even condolences.  If there ever was a ‘good’ surgery, however, this is it.  You see, the surgery is being done to remove a medical port; a device that was implanted under my daughter’s skin many years ago.  It was used during countless rounds of chemotherapy, many blood transfusions, for the administration of anesthesia, antibiotics, fluids, and other medicines.  It lasted years longer than expected, but now, it hasn’t been accessed in over a year.  The removal of this port will represent the start of a new phase in our daughter’s life.  This will be the first time since she was six months old that there hasn’t been some type of device, tube, or direct-line permanently in her body.

Don’t worry; I didn’t forget that this is a MARRIAGE blog.  I told you that first part, in order to tell you this:  While I’m sitting at the hospital with my daughter, my wife will be at home.  That’s been our deal more often than not.  I take care of MRI’s, surgeries, and hospital stays…and she takes care of everything else.  She’ll be waking up the kids, changing diapers, driving carpools, making meals, and a million other things I can’t even begin to imagine.  While she is running around like crazy, trying to manage the other kids, I will be handing our daughter over to the anesthesiologist.  While she is trying to catch a moment’s peace amidst the hectic day, I will be visiting the hospital chapel to say a quick prayer.  While she is loading up kids to go pick other kids up at carpool, I will be waiting for our daughter to wake up following surgery.

Most marriages seem to have different duties split between spouses.  For good or bad, these often become “their roles”.  Problems seem to arise when one spouse gets continually stuck with the more difficult, tiring, demanding duties, and the other gets to have all of the fun.  There have been comedy sitcoms that make fun of this situation.  I can remember Ray Romano pretending to be too stupid to learn how to fold the laundry, or clean the house correctly, in order to get his wife to take over those roles.  She usually did it out of frustration, and certainly not from any strong desire or love of laundry or cleaning.

I wonder if any of my own Roles were ill-gotten.  I am the one who goes to the park on nice weekends…this might seem like a perk, but it’s actually pretty tiring.  I am the one who teaches the kids how to fish…again, this might seem fun, but until they are older, I usually just end up pulling a lot of hooks out of my fingers.  I am the one who gives piggy-back rides…I can feel my back tightening up already.

Hmm.  I’m beginning to wonder if my wife hasn’t been tricking me into taking the harder roles.  And then I think about her at home, running ragged, while I will be sitting quietly at the hospital.  I think about her running around, hectic, EVERY day.  I wonder if it’s easier sitting in the hospital, waiting during surgery.  Would I rather be at home, not knowing, but keeping busy?  I guess there are no easy roles.  Everything we do, we do for each other, and for our family, and hopefully, for the Greater Glory of God.

I think of the apostles.  Peter was always going, the first to answer Jesus’ questions, getting in arguments with people, jumping out of the boat into the turbulent waters, and eventually dying a martyr’s death.  John was always around, always with Jesus, but usually listening and watching.  He was there for the transfiguration, and for the agony in the garden, and was the only one of the twelve at the foot of the cross.  He soaked it all in and then wrote it all down.  The early Church needed both types of men.  The Church today still needs both types of followers.  In every marriage, there are many different roles to fill. 

Tomorrow I will be like John, and sit watchful in the waiting room.  Perhaps Sunday, I will be more like Peter, as we celebrate our parish’s St. Patrick’s Day festival.  I just pray I remember to look at my wife, and make sure that, together, we are filling all the roles required of our marriage.  If something falls through the cracks, it is not she or I that failed, it is us.  We are bound together and strong together in our marital union.  And because of this, when she succeeds, I succeed.  When our marriage succeeds, our family is stronger, the church is stronger, and the world is on a closer path to God.

Written by: Matt Buehrig,     Inspired by: Wendy Buehrig 

Celebrating the Everday in your Marriage

Last week, our Lenten gospel reading was the Transfiguration. Jesus took his disciples up on a mountain and started shining like the sun. Peter was fascinated, and immediately began asking Jesus if he could pitch some tents up on top of the mountain and just stay there forever! I have this same feeling when our family has big, huge, memorable events: weddings, funerals, anniversaries. We can feel Christ present with us during those events. But during our everyday lives, it’s hard to feel Jesus with us. But He’s there just the same, in a hug from your spouse or a smile from your child. One thing I’m challenging myself to do during this Lent is to think about how Jesus is with us in our everyday, ordinary experiences. In our family, we’ve been lucky enough to have a bottle of wine to help remind us how special every ordinary day can be.

About 25 years ago, Tim and I were newly married and on a wine-tasting trip to the south of France. We were lucky enough to get a private tour of a high end wine cellar and at the end we decided to buy a bottle of expensive St. Emilion wine that promised to only get better with time. We bought the bottle, and immediately began thinking of when we might drink it. Should we have it on our ten year anniversary? Or perhaps save it for our 20th? At the birth of our first child? Or maybe at one of the weddings of our children? Or perhaps at a high school graduation celebration? The bottle of wine provided an opportunity for us to indulge ourselves in our wildest dreams about what our future would bring, we were young and in love and the future was full of hope and promise. We had no idea what was ahead: it was all possibility.

The bottle of wine journeyed with our family, through two countries, two states, and 4 houses. With each move, we’d reminisce about our trip to France and our hopes and dreams, and we’d wonder if the wine was going bad (you never know until you actually uncork it). Our family travelled along with the wine, through the birth of our three children and their failures and successes, the poignant losses of our parents to cancer and Alzheimer’s disease, a year-long job search after my Tim’s company relocated to South Carolina. After our 20 year anniversary, we began to ask ourselves in earnest: when do we drink the wine? What moment can possibly be special enough to drink the wine? What event will capture the fulfillment of all of our hopes and dreams that we shared on that afternoon in France 25 years ago?

This Christmas, we realized the moment had come. We deliberately decided that we wanted to drink the wine together with our children on a day that was not a special celebration, but instead at a quiet family dinner because we realized that our ordinary life was in fact quite miraculous and in a sense sacramental with a small “s”. I feel blessed that because we continued to consider when to drink the wine, we came to an awareness that Jesus has been our friend and companion throughout – in the intimate, quiet moments even more deeply than in the loud, celebratory events (and if you know our family, we’ve had a few of those). Just being together, with your loved ones and Jesus, is the greatest gift, if you only can see it.

Your family may not have a special bottle of wine to challenge you to reflect on our blessings, but I hope that during this Lent you come to recognize that the ground you are walking on is holy and the companion journeying with you is Jesus. Allow him to take the scales from your eyes so you can see how your everyday life is in fact infused with the sacred and be willing to drink deeply from the cup of life that he offers all of us, in times of both joy and sadness.

--Jeannie Steenberg