15 Years in - Our Marriage Story - Part 1

(Photo taken in 2008 at the Oregon coast during our short season of dating.)

MARRIAGE CHECKLIST

Everyone has their own ideas of what the marriage process should look like.

For many, ideas are formed by culture, by what is observed in the media.

For others, ideas are formed by tradition or religion.

For us, it was a confusing mashup of both.

Dating, for us, was purposeful.

The goal was to see if marriage was ahead.

Sex before marriage was out of the question.

Kissing was fine.

Living together was out.

And, choosing another “Christian” was a must.

I had been told:

“Marry someone you not only could see yourself living with, but someone you couldn’t live without.”

“When you don’t feel like being physically intimate, fake it.” (All other ideas and expectations in our heads around physical intimacy were formed by TV shows and movies.)

“A man should be the head of the house.” (Though I believed this, I didn’t know how to walk it out in a Christlike way…and, if you watched my life back then, you would have thought me a total hypocrite because I was overly controlling about most things in our life. All too often, I would just tell Brett what I was doing instead of having a conversation, inviting him into the process — I didn’t leave room for him to lead.)

Before deciding to make our dating status official, I told Brett all of my skeletons.

I wanted him to know upfront what he was getting into.

He didn’t have any skeletons to share and I felt so unworthy of him.

A few weeks in, during a season of great stress for me, I cried out to a friend and told her that I had to break up with him because he deserved someone so much better than me.

“STOP,” she told me. “He is your gift!”

This was the first time the weight of GRACE really sunk in for me.

There was nothing I could do to be worthy of such a gift and nothing I had done disqualified me.

Fast forward to our first year as a married couple.

We followed our “mismatched relationship check-list,” did all the “right things,” and on the outside we looked GREAT!

But inside…

We were so prideful.

When other couples would complain of arguments between them, we sat back with such pride saying things like, “You just gotta know who to marry.”

Truth was, we weren’t having arguments because we weren’t actually communicating.

We were both working jobs with odd hours, which meant that we rarely went to bed together.

Our time together was mostly spent eating out, buying things we didn’t need, and watching all 10 seasons of FRIENDS for the 10th time.

Essentially, we were acting like roommates.

By year 2, we thought, “Okay. So, we got married. We had our 2 years as DINKS. Now, it’s probably time for some kids! This is how it goes, right?”

We got pregnant with Elliott pretty quickly.

I quit my job when I was 5 months pregnant because my body wasn’t handling pregnancy very well.

(Ultrasound photo of Elliott, our firstborn)

Sleepless nights.

Passing ships.

Still not communicating well.

It was a rough season.

We never intended for back-to-back pregnancies, but I decided I was NEVER going back on birth control because of how it made me feel, so we tried a very loose form of natural family planning.

I wasn’t very good at it, apparently.

When Elliott was 6 months old, I became pregnant with Lucy.

We were quickly outgrowing our tiny 750 square foot home in the heart of Portland, Oregon.

(Photo of sweet Lucy at 3 weeks young)

Hubbs was frustrated with his job and started looking for different work.

When Lucy was born, he started a 5-week training that culminated in an immediate job offer that doubled our income. A year later, we moved to the outskirts of Portland.

Many days, I felt like a single mom of 2 under 2.

In the first year of his new job, Hubbs had 1-2 days a week where he would stay overnight somewhere else. When he was home, he slept odd hours and I would have to keep our 2 tiny humans quiet so he could sleep.

Anger, bitterness, and resentment grew in my heart during this season.

I wasn’t mad at Hubbs.

I was mad at our situation.

But, I didn’t know what to do with my feelings except ruminate on them.

We continued to do “good Christian things,” and by year 7, we were looking for the next “right” thing. So, we started getting certified to be foster parents.

That season FINALLY shed light on our deeply rooted communication issue, and we started a marriage assessment program with another couple at our church, which further exposed our divide.

We both sensed that our lack of physical intimacy was a problem and had lots of conversations about how to improve in that area. However, our opportunities were limited because of his job schedule, my fear of having another “oops” pregnancy, and the fact that we had such young kids.

We decided it was best to finish having the kids we wanted and then to shut down the factory.

Baby-number-last arrived in 2017.

(Our first family-of-5 photo)

This was the season that Young Living came into our lives.

I found HOPE through this community.

But, I also found a personal escape.

An entrepreneur by birth, I threw myself at the business, learning everything I could, and telling anyone who would listen.

My business became my idol and our marriage got worse.

We both struggled big with depression — we were living, but we definitely weren’t thriving — and, anytime we needed to have a serious conversation, Hubbs would say, “I can’t have this conversation right now. I’m too tired. I don’t even know what I am thinking.”

He wasn’t lying.

He was EXHAUSTED.

But, there was more under the surface, which I would find out later, that was causing such depth of exhaustion.

This lack of communication made it difficult to trust him and things continued to get worse.

**Pausing here to point out that we were constantly doing what was right in our own eyes. This is not the way of peace. But, things were about to change…**