I don’t know how he got there so fast, but he beat me to the hospital the day they said they were admitting me. He sat glued to me in the ER, anxiety in his eyes. He funneled his nervous energy into the little things like charging my phone and making sure my water bottle stayed full.
He came every day from work, straight to the hospital, laid in the bed with me, becoming my pillow. The best sleep I had in the hospital was laying on his chest.
He held my hand through the painful wound care, letting me squeeze his hand until he lost feeling in his fingers. He said the morning offering and the night prayers and every single word meant more than it ever had.
When they said I could go home he packed up the room at lightening speed, brought around the car where he had carefully made a nest in the backseat so I could ride home as comfortably as possible. He just wanted me to be home, even if I was a hot mess.
He ordered a commode to go by the bed at home. He daily takes away my waste.
In recent weeks he has run all the errands and handled all the finances, homeschooled the kids, made dinners, and looked after the little details, even the bureaucracy of insurance.
When I cry in the night he reaches for me and holds me until the pain finishes leaking out of my eyes and pouring down my cheeks.
This is not where I thought we’d be one year into marriage. I had dreams of holding his baby by this time. Instead he holds me, as helpless as a baby. I carry the weight of my extreme dependency; he carries me. It is humbling indeed to go from the woman who runs everything and is independent, needing nothing to the one who has to ask for help to go to the bathroom and to bathe.
Being emptied is very heavy. Neediness is the most complicated thing to carry. When forced to carry it, it helps to have someone carry you.
Every newlywed couple has their dreams–building a life together, making a home, maybe traveling or going on pilgrimage, love-making becoming life-giving, and a passion that lasts until we are old and frail. When envisioning that married life, no one usually pencils in illness and loss and brokenness. Those are bits only God can write, I think. And write them he does, with gentle brush strokes. They are the unexpected twists and turns in life. The sorrows weaving grace into secret places and healing things we didn’t know were broken.
This is definitely not what I thought life would look like a year into marriage. But not because of the pain, but because of the beauty. This deep sense of belonging and safety I thought developed only slowly over time when people have been married decades and could trace their stories together from their youth. Ours is a young love, which we only found in an middle age. There is likely no Golden Anniversary for us. What we have is now.
Our love reminds me of the wine at the wedding feast of Cana.
Remember that at this wedding they ran out of wine. So Our Lady goes to Jesus and says, “They are out of wine.” And Jesus says, “Not now, Mother.” But Mary, full of complete trust in her Divine Son says to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” She always says that, doesn’t she? When we go to her with our troubles she points us back to Jesus’ will. Every time.
Jesus told the servants to fill the water jugs and then to take some to the master of the feast. And famously the master of the feast exults in how superb this wine is! The best wine was saved for the last.
The thing about wine is that it takes time. It has to be pressed, fermented, aged, bottled, and rested. It takes 10-15 years for a decent bottle. Jesus didn’t just make new wine from water. He made good old wine. He made something that showed the passage of time–complex, complete, and exquisite. What should take decades to accomplish, Jesus made instantly in response to one act of obedience and one petition made out of love.
My marriage is like this wine. It’s new. We didn’t get married until we were 46. We’ve been at this only a year. Chemistry cannot explain this kind of love any more than chemistry could explain how good that wine was in Cana.
We talk about how Jesus makes all things new. Yet, have you considered that he also makes new things old. He has taken our obedience to “Do whatever he tells you” and made it into this tenderness that rejoices in being with the beloved when things are tough or sad or messy. This is old marriage dedication and sweetness in new marriage packaging.
How we can be absolutely exhausted, medicated, and bandaged, sleeping next to a toilet and be so happy to be together is not of human planning. That’s divine inspiration.
St. John Chrysostom says, “Tell [your wife] that you love her more than your own life, because this present life is nothing, and that your only hope is that the two of you pass through this life in such a way that in the world to come you will be united in perfect love. Say to her, ‘Our time here is brief and fleeting, but if we are pleasing to God, we can exchange this life for the kingdom to come. Then we will be perfectly one both with Christ and each other, and our pleasure will know no bounds. I value your love above all things, and nothing would be so bitter or painful to me as our being at odds with each other. Even if I lose everything, any affliction is tolerable if you will be true to me.'”
