When time is hard on a marriage

When you walk down the aisle when you’re young, you don’t look down the river of your life, and think one day I will be too tired and too busy for this marriage. You don’t see the bills and the kids and the responsibilities that will shape you as a couple.

When you’re young, you see your partner without the lines and wrinkles of time, and you have no idea the forces that will put those lines and wrinkles on your husband’s forty-year-old face.

Time can be hard on a marriage.

I didn’t start fighting time until about two decades into my marriage. For our 20th anniversary we went away for one night alone together. To a cabin in the woods where the birds sang in the pines very early in the morning. We were almost too tired for romance. I remember the birds because they woke us at dawn and all I could think was: we need to get home to the baby! Get home to the kids. Get back to our life that was far too overwhelming at the time.

Driving back to our responsibilities that day, I realized time was swallowing us whole. I no longer knew how to “just be” with my husband because I was being so many things to so many other people.

Between the kids and the house and church and helping others in crisis, mostly other marriages in crisis, I realized time was doing a number on us. Time we could never get back.

I started really questioning how I spent my time.

Not long after this, I locked myself out of the house by accident. I looked through our front door– the front door is glass– and I could see everything that needed doing in the house. My cell phone sat on the counter. Toys were all over the living room. Laundry was on the floor. Dinner still needed planning and preparation.

But I couldn’t get into the house and Scott wouldn’t be home for several hours to unlock the door. I had a baby in my arms and a toddler hanging on my leg so doing yard work was out of the question.

I found myself lying flat on my back on our trampoline with the baby beside me as our toddler bounced us up and down. Looking into the sky, all I saw was blue. For a while I noticed nothing else but endless blue sky, my mind spinning with all I was missing doing in the house. Doing on the phone.

Then pretty soon I saw a bird soar into my staring. And then a plane far up in the sky. Just a speck really, headed for Seattle because the passenger planes that fly over our farm jaunt from Sacramento to Seattle. I imagined Scott and I on that plane. What would we do together in Seattle? Could we really leave the kids for a while? Could we afford a trip like that? When I really thought about it, time cost the most.

I came to the conclusion we couldn’t afford a plane trip. Even more than the money, time was too hard to come by. But time was spinning out slow that day on the trampoline and pretty soon I noticed cobwebs drifting through the air. That blue sky held more than I first realized.

My marriage held more than I first realized too.

“The laundry can wait please come sit with me,” Scott was always saying in those crazy days when I was far too busy. I’d run to the washer to throw in a load, or the dryer to fold as fast as I could before going to sit with my husband. The phone would ring with someone needing help on the line before I hardly sat down. Or the baby would cry. Or the kids would need me.

I was on a prayer team and helped with women’s Bible studies back then. So many couples were hurting at our church. Scott and I weren’t hurting, at least I didn’t think we were hurting. Our hands were full with a houseful of children and a counter full of bills, but our marriage was humming along just fine.

Until that day on the trampoline when I realized time was humming along way too fast for our marriage to be just fine. Too many other things were taking time away from me loving my husband the way I should be loving him.

I didn’t know cobwebs floated through the sky when it was blue because I’d never really looked. What were the cobwebs floating through my marriage? Did the cobwebs really matter? Were spiders hanging from those cobwebs?

When had all those spidery little lines settled on my husband’s handsome face? On my own face? Were we really forty already and getting wrinkles? This was hard to believe with a baby still in our arms, but we weren’t getting any younger.

By the time Scott came home from work and unlocked our front door that day something in me had shifted. I knew the sky wasn’t just blue.

And I knew our marriage deserved more than time just rolling over us. After that day, I began saying “no” to a lot of things. “No, I can’t help with that Bible study. No, I can’t make that prayer meeting tonight. No, I can’t be on that committee.”

This didn’t go over well with some people, but my husband deserved more of my time and energy than I’d been giving him. We also began unplugging the landline phone and turning off our cell phones in the evenings. “Guarding our time,” we called it.

Nearly ten years later, I look back on that day when I realized the sky wasn’t just blue as an important life moment.

Have we helped many people outside of our family since the day I began saying “no” to so many things? Perhaps not. I did start blogging, hoping to create a map of sorts for younger wives, and for myself because sometimes I get lost and need to double back on the lessons I’ve learned in life.

I do know that time won’t wait for you to realize the sky isn’t just blue. The faster you run, the faster time will run in your life. In your marriage. You may lose sight of your husband. You many even lose your husband if you ignore him long enough.

If all our kids left home today, and Scott and I suddenly had an empty nest, we would be able to just enjoy each other because after that day on the trampoline, I learned how to just enjoy my husband. The wrinkles on his face don’t surprise me anymore because I take the time to really look at him.

I’ve had to cut other things out of my life to really look at my husband, but I don’t regret this. I want time to be easy on my man. Easy on our marriage. I want to go to a cabin in the woods on our anniversary and wake to the birds singing in the pines and not wildly think: we‘ve got to get home to all our responsibilities! 

I want to think, I’m home with my husband in these woods. We can take our time together here.