Today marks the seventh year of marriage for The Groom and I. I wrote about our fifth year, but this is an important milestone too. The seventh year is when a lot of marriages crack. They call it the “seven year itch” when people become uncomfortable with their commitment and try to find a way out. Personally, I think it has more to do with a midlife crisis than marriage in particular.

Of course, despite what the story books tell us, no marriage is perfect and anyone who tells you otherwise has some serious secrets to hide. We’ve definitely had our share of hard times. We argue over stupid stuff like who did the dishes last and who lost the remote.

That’s us in the dating phase

We laugh about it later, well, mostly me, I do the laughing for both of us because I have a tendency to not take serious things seriously. That bugs him. Sometimes things really are serious and I’m saying it’s no biggie. He keeps me grounded, I keep him fun. :)

We had a short dating period because God came over us pretty quickly and we both sort of just knew it was going to lead to a very long marriage. It was a “why wait” sort of moment we shared, in a cornfield of all places.

That’s my dad, not my groom

Avoiding the itch

The biggest struggle I have, and I think we all deal with it, is the wondering, the whatifs. I get frustrated with him and think about what might it be like right now if I hadn’t followed God’s will that day and had gone looking for someone else? What if I could come to believe in divorce, what potential is there for me that I’m not getting here. That’s the itch.

It’s easy not to scratch it when there’s nothing to tempt me, but I wonder sometimes, what I would do if faced with an opportunity to “get out” just at the right moment when we’ve just had a fight. I pray for those temptations to stay far far away, and for the strength to always remember the long spans between those really very few and minor disagreements.

Finding the niche

Ever since my battle with depression I’ve been hopelessly, even carelessly, a glass half full kind of person. And it works for me. It drives my Groom crazy sometimes because I often don’t see the severity of some things, but it keeps me focused on the good things we have.

When he leaves trash all over the basement, I remember how hard he works all day, physically moving brick and stone for 12 hours, and I cut him some slack. I also remember how chatty I can be and how that drives him crazy and he doesn’t nag me about it. He just says a lot of “uh-hmm” and “yeah” and lets me go on and on about CSS this and Wordpress that.

I’m not sure what the rest of our marriage holds for us, but after seven years I think we’ve found a niche. We’re in a groove. When people gawk at the twins and wonder how we do it, I tell them, I only have two babies to worry about, but I have friends with triplets and even quintuplets, and we go on, knowing we have a secret… we love Christ, and in return, He lavishes us with such peace that even the chaos of the sudden surprise of the twins becomes a tremendous blessing only disguised as terror!

Here’s wishing you blessings and lots and lots of mercy in your own marriages. And for those still single, embrace it, but be ready to let go of who you are as a single person to experience the better you in someone else’s arms (much like a caterpillar and a butterfly). ;)