08/02/2024
What they don’t tell you when you stand at an altar on a lovey-dovey afternoon in fancy outfits is that marriage, on paper, is about commitment and fidelity—but marriage, in practice, is about sacrifice and starting over.
Even when you’re tired. Even when you’re angry. Even when you don’t feel like it. Especially then.
You wake up at 3 a.m. to a snoring spouse and jab his side so he rolls over, an interruption he doesn’t remember in the morning, but you definitely do.
Start over.
You glance down at the gas gauge in your car and realize sometime in the last 24 hours, despite the tense words you exchanged over nothing in the same time frame, he filled it for you just because.
Start over.
You turn dress socks and t-shirts right-side out as you fish them out from underneath the bed and toss them onto the growing laundry pile that never seems to be conquered.
Start over.
You hear him reading a story in the other room at bedtime, making the silly monster voice that dissolves your daughters into puddles of giggles, the kind of deep-down-to-your-toes laughter you don’t show him nearly enough these days.
Start over.
You put away yet another pair of size 12 shoes that always seem to be cluttering up the didn’t-I-just-clean-this front hall, the ones that track in sand and dirt and the heavy load of responsibility he shoulders for your family quietly.
Start over.
And you learn, somewhere in the minutia of married life, that this partner you promised forever isn’t perfect. You realize how flawed and finicky and utterly selfish you are, too.
So you start over. Again and again. Day after day. For now and forever, until death do you part.
It’s true what they say: marriage can be hard work—but it’s humble and holy and beautiful, too.
In the spaces between the picture-perfect moments and the memories that weave together a lifetime stand two imperfect people who choose, sometimes even without knowing, to start over.
And it can make all the difference.
Shard with permission from Carolyn Moore - Writer
