15 Annos

Today is our 15 Year Anniversary.

This week of September holds a lot of milestones for our family – my husband turned 44, my daughter turned 10, our marriage turns 15, and the twins turn two in a few weeks. All of these are leaving me head-tiltedly bewildered. How did time go so fast?

I mean, part of it is the feeling of getting old. I’m not old enough to have teenagers, or be married for 15 years.  We just threw this awesome party like a nanosecond ago.

But part of it is also the season we are in too. It speeds up time.

Having teenagers and toddlers is a bit like straddling two very tall buildings at the same time. Your legs start to feel like jello after a while and you lose your bearings for what ground level (life with no kids, or one kid, or even two) used to be like.

It’s a time of breaking down, of digging deep and learning hard lessons. There are so many things that worked when our kids were all under 10 and in bed by 8 o’clock that don’t work anymore. We eat in shifts: toddlers get hungry early, older kids eat late due to sports. (Family dinner was a hard one to let go of for me for sure). The big kids want to stay up with us watching movies, and the twins want us to get up with the birds. There is candle burning going on at both ends and also somewhere in the middle too.

Obviously this is all hard on a marriage. But immensely purifying. Any issues that we thought we could sweep under the rug have to be drawn out and dealt with because of the sheer number of logistics of our life. I remember some friends worrying the stress of too many kids would hurt our marriage, but I think the opposite might be true. It forges fox-hole loyalty.

The popular Canadian professor Dr. Jordan Peterson says, marriage is “a lifelong wrestling between two worthy adversaries who strengthen each other and help one another to sort out and improve upon their various personal struggles and weaknesses.” One of his main principles is the more responsibility you take on in your life the more meaning you will find, and when he says that I think he must know what having a large family is like. Or at least why it’s worth it.

Year 15 looks like: toddler dimples in hands, emerging personalities that are hilarious and witty, a boy so innocent his smile and hugs delight everyone, and his twin who manages to be salty and sweet at the same time. There is lots and lots of sibling love. There is probably too much screen time. A home that is more and more becoming our own, tailored to our life and not just some walls we inhabit. Days revolve around early wake ups, rides to school and sports, lots and lots of food, and walks outside. These are the core of my days, a half hour of quiet and calm in the stormy sea of chaos coordinating. They are magic every season but especially in this season, with gorgeous fall weather, when the twins are strapped down (read: safe and not trashing a room) and silently watch the wind blow leaves to the ground and autumn light glinting on the bay. I get to pray and breath, which feel like the same thing.

Our neighbors have fruit trees, and the twins know when we walk by them I’ll go over and pick peaches and apples. They point and get excited as soon as we get near the trees. Yesterday I went and all the peaches were gone, a reminder that everything is a season, including this challenging time.

They still they have apples though.

I’m also reading this book, which I highly recommend if you want to find peace and awe in your interior life but I don’t recommend it if you want to write and produce a lot of on line content for consumption because it will make you not want to contribute to the noise in the world in anyway. One of the chapters has a story about St. Theresa of Calcutta, and a priest who came to see her and ask her for prayers. She said she always prays for priests, and gave him a miraculous medal. Then she asked him how much he prays. Mass, the Rosary, and the Brevery every day was his answer. “That is not enough,” she said. “I thought you were going to ask me about my works of charity,” he said. She looked at him very seriously, and said “Do you think I am able to do my works of charity without praying first?”

A reminder that we need God to love well, through our limitations and theirs. And that is probably the most important thing I’ve learned about marriage. That and there is no one I would rather do it with than Rob.