It’s Thanksgiving Eve and I should probably be starting various dinner items in preparation for the big day. Instead, I have spent most of the day reading my Bible, reading blogs, writing my dissertation, and chatting with my eldest daughters, home from college. The unacceptable sitting scenario is due to a hard fall on the stairs yesterday, in which I jacked up my knee.
In a house with four stories and a clumsy woman, stair accidents happen too frequently.
During my day of reading, I came across a marriage blog in which the author discussed how she and her husband grew apart and came back together. She wrote about their second honeymoon, “We fell in love again.”
Immediately, I thought about my own marriage. I thought about the years we spent arguing and fighting and being hurt over an affair, a pornography addiction, and the PTSD and trauma that came with it. Those years weren’t fun. I wasn’t in love with my husband. A strong 75% of the time I wanted to cut him. I definitely went through moments that I was sure I was going to divorce him.
But I was committed. I was committed to making it work if we could. Some days, we were sure we could. Sometimes everything would fall apart the very next day. I had a vision of what we could be, and I wasn’t willing to give up that vision if we didn’t have to. When I became a Christian in the middle of the disaster, I would start to pack up my stuff and Holy Spirit would tell me to stop. My spirit would become unsettled.
He knew better than I.
So we fought one battle at a time. The battle of the revelation of the affair. The battle of desiring suicide. The battle of bitterness. The battle of hate. The battle of apathy. One by one we conquered them together, gradually clearing the air. It was a long process. Battles often aren’t won in a matter of hours, or even days. Some battles lasted months, or even years. The battle called betrayal lasted a very long time. We grasped hands—even if we didn’t like each other--and took steps forward together, moving the heavy obstacles out of our way as we went, with God guiding us forward and often taking care of things that we had no capacity to repair.
One day, without even knowing it, we pushed aside the last heavy obstacle. The last ugly battle on the withered and burnt landscape of our marriage.
And with all of the battles out of the way, I was able to see my husband clearly again. As the smoke cleared, the shots ceased, there he was. Heart bared, as scarred as I was, and still present.
And we fell in love again.
Fell hard. With a depth I can’t explain, but I think others can see. Fell harder than my fall on the stairs yesterday, for sure, and that one hurt.
I’m so thankful for the fight. What I didn’t realize at the time was that each battle we fought was paving the way for a new, stronger love, a stronger relationship. Each time we agreed to work through a battle, we worked towards falling in love again. Most people don’t stay around to reach that point. The battles overtake them and they never get to the point where the air is cleared and they can fall deeply in love with their spouse again. I say “deeply” because I know that the way I love my husband now is so much stronger and carries so much more gratefulness because of what we’ve been through.
He hung on. I hung on. Sometimes it was with gritted teeth, but we gritted them together.
So this Thanksgiving, I’m grateful for the stubbornness through anger and gritted teeth. I’m grateful for vision and the Holy Spirit’s alarm bells. I’m thankful that hanging on when we didn’t want to led us to a love and friendship that I truly think we only would have dreamed of without the battles we endured. I'm so thankful for the godly man I'm married to, and that I have been privileged to stand beside him as he grew, even if his growing pains also affected me.
This Thanksgiving, I’m thankful for the fight.
Happy Thanksgiving.
Wishing you all God’s love and smiles,
Chala Baker, Mdiv.