Marriage Letters: On Patience
from weheartit
Dear Seth,
I guess that because we’ve written about our love, it’d be easy construct an imagined Rock House world where pictures hang perfectly, where you always remember to take out the trash, and I always keep it steamed up with good cooking and lingerie. It’s just not true, is it? Sometimes it’s hard to believe that you’re mindful of me, and when we hit those strides of frustration, I know you’re feeling the same of me.
Some of whom we’ve deemed the holiest in matrimony have turned out to be just like the rest of us – broken, prone to lonely, starved for affection and affirmation. Their families have shattered like an angry glass thrown to the floor. We watch and come home clinging. You hold me more tightly, and I take deeper, longer breathes. Every once in a while, the world spins a little slower, and we’re able to hold our marriage up to the light and call it all the words that mean precious.
Glass shattered about us, we have had to slow it all down, hold on, and wait this out. Now more than ever, we feel home together even if in boxes, but only in the sense that we’re headed to another life, and between here and there is how we fail over and over again to love and respect. I have learned from you that patience is equal part perseverance and hope. It endures disappointment, soothes it down with touch.
Our marriage has been one little failure after another, strengthened by every single time we say, “but I’m still here.” Patience is when you say, “but I’m still here.” The patient love is what inches us forward, believing in the unseen. Patience is when you walk on the waters of hope for me, when I’m refusing the vision.
It makes us feel like a miracle.
Thank you for it, for enduring with me.
Amber
***
Please do join Seth, Joy, Scott, and me as we hold our marriages up to the light. Call your marriage what it really is. Every Monday we’re writing letters because we believe that when we bless our own marriage, we bless the marriages of others. When you go hard after your marriage, I’m encouraged to go after mine. Thank you for joining us. Next week we’ll write on “My Job. Your Job.”
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- February 13, 2012
- 28 Comments
- 0
- marriage
Joy @ Joy In This Journey
February 13, 2012"patience is equal part perseverance and hope" <--- THIS.
Amber
February 13, 2012I need more of it.
Lori
February 13, 2012So beautifully written and precise. I'm sharing this. Thank you!
Amber
February 13, 2012Thank you, Lori.
Bev
February 13, 2012this is beautiful...and real.
Amber
February 13, 2012Bev, for some reason today I feel so serious! Thanks for coming round here.
Elizabeth
February 13, 2012this morning you make me cry.
Amber
February 13, 2012Well, fellow mother of many boys, I've always felt that you and I are in this together.
Prudence
February 13, 2012Oh Amber. Dearest dearest Amber. This is beautiful.
"Patience is when you say, “but I’m still here.” The patient love is what inches us forward, believing in the unseen."
How quickly love would be dissolved like salt in boiling water if it wasn't for patience.
Amber
February 14, 2012Prudy, you always make me feel like I'm not alone in my crazy. Always.
Shelly Miller
February 13, 2012Patience is when you walk on the waters of hope for me, when I’m refusing the vision - this is so me and my husband. As always you inspire with your authenticity, your words like a mirror. I get excited when I see your posts in my inbox!
keLi
February 13, 2012"but i'm still here." amen. this is what it's been like. exactly this. beautiful post, amber.
Jen @ Martymom's Musings
February 14, 2012"It makes us feel like a miracle." Yes this, I can relate! Beautiful.
Thanks for the encouragement to write letters...I did yesterday and linked up.
Jen
Cathy
February 14, 2012Even after 33 years of marriage.....we both say "I'm still here"....and I so love what you said about patience...".when you walk on the waters of hope for me, when I’m refusing the vision" –this is me refusing when he has the vision.....thanks for all who are so open and authentic.
Lindset
February 15, 2012I like this post encourage me write a letters thank you for sharing this to us..
Seth
February 15, 2012I like this.
I like that you write the truth. I love it when you write. Really really.
Adam
February 15, 2012"Patience is when you walk on the waters of hope for me, when I’m refusing the vision."
<< Will be quoting you on this. It's been a theme for us lately - that God in His grace gives us each the strength to walk in faith when the other can only just hang on, and that we are in a constant dance between those roles.
Mrs. B
February 15, 2012Thank you! We have just spent the past year in very intense cleansing of our marriage and are finally, truly one flesh after 23 years of marriage. We recently started a marriage group with 3 other couples, seeking to help encourage them in growing their marriages and having some close friends with whom we can be Real and accountable to when we need one another.
I truly believe that the church will experience a spiritual revival when Christian marriages really reflect the spiritual relationship that God created them to reflect...Christ and His Bride, the Church.
diana trautwein
February 15, 2012Oh yeah, walking on the waters of hope for one another...This is HUGE. We are not the same person, even though we become one, over time, with lots of trial and error. And sometimes one of us is drowning in the flood and that's when the other can step up onto the waves and call us up there, too. Great image. Thank you.
erin a.
February 15, 2012I love this, Amber. Your explanation for patience is perfect. Perseverance + hope. that is love!
Ann Kroeker
February 19, 2012"Every once in a while, the world spins a little slower, and we’re able to hold our marriage up to the light and call it all the words that mean precious."
Yes. Yes, let us all do this.