Building an Us

I've missed you, blog! Oh I've been wonderfully busy with the most magnificent things, but I've still missed you!

I'm thinking today how fun it is to be making an "us" out of a "him" and "me." I'm getting a blessed opportunity to build a life together with my new husband and now the kids are home, which makes for a more crazy and infinitely more interesting journey. It's not easy to blend a family. It can also be delightfully rewarding.

One thing I love is that we began our marriage with a very seasoned, very established him, and a pretty seasoned and established me. I had my own things, he had his. I had my own traditions, he had his. I had my own ideas about how to make love work, and he had his. So now, we begin blending his things, his traditions, his ideas with mine and a new "us" is born. I have to say this is so much different from the first time when I had nothing. I was so young, I had literally no idea what I was doing. This time, I'm well aware of the risks, the sacrifices, the potential pain, as is he. We decided it was worth the risk and we jumped! Now I have to say what we're "cooking up" is pretty yummy, with the ingredients each of us has to give.

I must also say it's been awkward at times. Ya see, I married outside my denomination. (GASP!!!) And I married rather quickly, much sooner than the prescribed mourning period or whatever an approved amount of time it is a person is supposed to wait around before they move on after a divorce. A surprising move for a denominational poster girl like me. Some people aren't quite sure what to make of it. But I must be honest with you. I can't think of a marriage (except possibly my own parents) in my denomination or among people who would advise me against my choice, that I envy. Not one. Nobody seems to be having the kind of deep love, laughter, joy, and even heartwrenching passion that would make me look at their marriage and say "Boy, I wish I had a marriage like that." Know whose marriage I envy? MINE! Oh yeah, I know we just started and all that and we're still honeymooning and all that. I'm all too aware of the challenges we will face and the fact that we will have to work very hard at maintaining what we have begun. We've had our disagreements and already the obstacles are great. I suppose I'm trying to simply voice the thought that though my new marriage has met with some disapproval here and there, I find it interesting that the kind of love and depth of passion and joy I always dreamed of is now mine, and though my man isn't a member of my denomination, he demonstrates the kind of love and care I rarely saw inside my denomination between a husband and wife. I'd always been told marriage should be like this, but never saw it lived until now... a man outside my denomination happens to be showing me... and maybe them... how it's done.

This brings me to a sobering thought about my own self. How often have I written off people, due to their differences, perhaps in beliefs or looks or whatever, and missed something spectacular? See the amazing guy I'm married to now, wasn't on what would once have been my list of approved individuals with which to associate. Yowie! I suppose it took going through the kind of humiliation that rotated me off of some people's approved lists to open my mind and heart to something different, something deeper that just what I found inside my own self. Boy am I glad it did.

I have much more to download from my mind and my heart.

For now, I close with a list of happy pleasures:

Giggles and smiles in our home, a big goofy dog that loves my boy, loaning one of my favorite books to my daughter, catching up over coffee, holding wrinkled hands at work, a husband who is a chef... how could I ask for more??, noisy laughter that happens when kids sock slide on the wood floor down the hallway, and quiet moments with my babies just settling in at home.