The Leaky Boat

Today my husband Jason and I are celebrating seven wonderful years of marriage. Wonderful, but certainly not easy. We've been married for seven years, yes, but together for thirteen. I can think of so many couples that haven't made it past their seventh year of marriage, or if they have, the union was crumbling by then. Marriage is hard, but so worth the fight.

We go on day to day looking beyond the things that perhaps aren't so perfect, and then one day something happens. It seems all those little things align in such a way that they create a hole right through the center of it all. The trick is to realize there's a hole in your boat before it sinks. Sometimes it's harder to admit you've sprung a leak than it is to fix it - then, by the time you decide to try and patch it, the water has gotten too high to breath.

It's amazing what can send a relationship into rocky water. For us it was death. In particular, my husband's dad's death. I'm not totally blaming all of our problems on that one thing, but it's the event that aligned all the little things up resulting in a hole. It just seems so strange to me that this event - losing someone we love so much so unexpectedly - could spring a leak in our boat. This is when we should be leaning on one another to hold each other up. Instead we've drifted downward into our own sorrows, leaving the other person with no one to lean against. Perhaps we felt we were each carrying enough weight of our own and didn't want to heavy the load for the other. Perhaps it was pride, not wanting the other to see how weak and shaken we were. Perhaps it was shame, because we didn't feel strong enough to hold the other up. For me it was all of these things. I think perhaps my husband was leaning and I let him fall. I let him fall because I felt too much weight on my own shoulders and was ashamed that I couldn't carry my own, let alone his - I couldn't ask him to carry it for me because I didn't want to hurt him anymore than he already was.

It was out of love I did this. Love for my father-in-law and love for my husband. The problem with all of this love is that it makes you do stupid things. Most of the time you think it makes you act like a fool to win someone's heart, but in my case I failed to use the love we have to hold our boat together. Now we're up to our ankles in water.

We'll make it through the rocks though. We've gotten out the tools to repair the hole, and we have buckets ready to bail out the water. After seven years of marriage, I'm still learning how to love. I'm still learning new things about my husband. I'm still learning new things about me. We're still learning new things about us.

I love my husband, and I have no doubt in my mind that my husband loves me with his whole being. Someday we may just get it right. Maybe when we're celebrating our 50th...