When I first met my future husband in the Spring of 1991, I noted his infectious smile and quiet, thoughtful nature. We had similar simple needs, finding contentment with each other's company hiking a mountain or laughing over a home-cooked meal. Twenty years ago this month, we took the step of walking down the aisle together. A wedding is a significant personal milestone and big business here in Northern New England. But it didn’t seem like such a giant step, given our then already substantial time together. Still, after the flowers had wilted and the guests departed, I learned that marriage required tremendous faith. Faith that that we could work out problems, and faith that we could make mistakes and become stronger from them.
Marriage required faith that we could give each other room for differences. That I could blast my Prince albums in the house alone, and he could watch Battlestar Galactica after I went to bed. That not only was it OK for me to be an atheist and him to attend church, but we could debate each other’s beliefs with curiosity, not superiority.
Faith that we could imagine a future after doctors told us we couldn’t have children, and faith that we could make it through two separate high-risk pregnancies when the doctors proved wrong. Faith that when I started tumbling down an icy mountainside, that my husband would catch me. And when my son later had to be transported off another icy mountainside to the emergency room with a broken femur bone, I could tell my husband in our son’s surgical recovery room the next morning, “It’s OK, I’ll take over. Go home and rest.”
Faith that we could make career changes and survive job loss when the economy tanked. Faith that when loved ones passed away, that at least one of us could find words to express our sorrow. Faith that it's OK for either or both of us to be incredibly angry at events in the world and speak out, and that it’s also OK to acknowledge that we probably can’t solve any of the world’s problems on any particular evening.
In many ways we’ve been incredibly lucky. We’ve been healthy. We have healthy kids who challenge and inspire us every day. My husband and I sometimes question how we’ll pay for college, how we’ll retire, and how habitable the world will become. But 20 years of marriage has taught me to simply find his smile and have faith.
