Three Keys to Successful Marriage

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Last night, we spoke to the parish Confirmation class about the sacrament of marriage and, by extension, marital sexuality. At the end, we asked for questions, and we got this one:

“You talked about the three things that cause the most marriage breakups. What are the three things that a marriage has to have to survive?”

(I know. That’s a good question, isn’t it?)

I’ve written about this before, but to distill it required some thought. Eventually, we came up with:

  • Common values. This has more to do with world view and life philosophy than it does with overt religious belief, although for some people religion is certainly going to be a primary concern. What I’m talking about is more practical. A really lazy person and a driven self-motivator are likely to have a lot of problems. Someone who is thoughtful and empathizes with a person on the other side of the conflict isn’t likely to be happy with someone who makes snap judgments and doesn’t care to see any other point of view.
  • Good communication. Obviously. But I think this also implies being open to changing your mind and your behavior, not just being good at talking.
  • A willingness to subordinate yourself. This is the thing I find the most difficult. I don’t know, maybe everybody has to fight a tendency to think of what I want to do or have, what I need my spouse to do for me, instead of what I need to do for him. It’s not that a person is never allowed to assert his or her own needs and desires. But I think it’s much easier for us, as human beings, to go overboard in the direction of selfishness than in the direction of selflessness.

What do you think? If you had to list three deal-breakers for people discerning marriage, what would they be?

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Published in: on February 28, 2011 at 7:32 am  Comments (6)  
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Family Time

 This year, Christian and I decided to make some New Years Resolutions for our marriage. I had suggested this before, but he resisted last year, fearing (correctly) that I had an agenda. And because I knew he was correct, I also knew I couldn’t force the issue. So this year when I brought it up again, I made very certain that I didn’t spend any time thinking about it ahead of time, so I couldn’t corrupt the process with my own agenda.

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We decided to commit to two technology-free nights a week. On Tuesday and Friday nights, the computer powers down at 5, the TV goes off, and we spend time as a family and (after kids’ bedtimes) a married couple.

It hasn’t worked out quite as we envisioned yet, because a couple of times we’ve spent that family time dealing with sick children, and last night Christian had to return a phone call that lasted half an hour. Nonetheless, it’s been a good experience.

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Last night, while Christian taught lessons, I sat down at the kitchen table with the kids and we colored on Julianna’s Crayola mobile set she got for Christmas. Alex drew a portrait of the family; Nicholas scribbled on scratch paper, and Julianna showed off her ability to make straight lines and circles without anyone guiding her hand.

Color mark from Crayola

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We went upstairs and got ready for bed, read Farkle McBride and Cowboy Katie, and then, when Christian got done with lessons, he came up to tuck the little ones into bed while I read Laura Ingalls Wilder to Alex. And when the phone call was done, Christian and I sat on the couch and talked till time for bed.

File:Rainbowcrayonsphhoto 11261 20090519-1.jpgA simple night, nothing fancy, and I can’t tell you how many times I wished we could run over to the computer and look something up. But the trouble with technology is that it’s so hard to pull away from it once it’s on. I get on the computer to look up some store hours, and then I think, I’ll just check email while I’m here, and oh, I haven’t done Facebook much today and Mom said she was putting pictures up, and suddenly I’ve spent half an hour there. And every night, Christian flips through channels and says, “There’s really nothing on,” and yet continues to flip through them.

It’s good for us to turn it all off. Break the addiction. Reconnect. It may not have a hook and a page-turning plot, but it works for us.

Published in: on January 19, 2011 at 6:12 am  Comments (2)  
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What A Marriage Needs

Lately it’s become clear to me how often men and women willfully misunderstand each other.

A discussion about love, marriage and dividing household responsibilities devolved into an argument about whether socks on the floor constitute a deal-breaker. I was shocked at the speed with which rational thought turned into “men are from Mars, women are from Venus, and never the two shall meet.”

Well, I don’t buy it.

I’m guest posting this week over at Real Zest. Come on over to read the rest, and join in the discussion!

Published in: on January 5, 2011 at 4:36 am  Comments (2)  
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When Good Intentions Go Awry

Obsessive Compulsive

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I prepared for this for weeks.

I mean it. Weeks. Notes in my calendar. Detailed reading. Brainstorming. It was an online contest that gave you the chance to put your novel in front of thirteen agents at one time—and more importantly, this was not their fathoms-deep slush pile; this was a chance for them to pause and give real consideration. It was a big deal, and they were only accepting a limited amount of entries.

A week ago, I prepared the email to submit, so that when the moment came, all I had to do was hit “send.” Yesterday, I set the timer for three minutes before the first round opened. But I waited for the “call for submissions” to show up online, and the first round filled up in less than a minute.

Gnashing my teeth, I waited all afternoon for the second round, knowing that it was my last shot. I started checking the computer against the atomic clock at 4:45. At 4:59, I planted myself in front of the computer with my finger over the “send” button, and the minute it changed to 5, I clicked. Yess. Done.

And the immediate email came back: entry rejected. Too long.

I almost threw up. How could that be? I checked it, rechecked it, counted it three different ways. I didn’t waste any time trying to overcome obsessive compulsive tendencies on this one. It was perfect. How could it be too long?

Of course, by now, kids were swarming me, and it took fully three minutes to recreate the email and hit “send” again, by which time the contest was full. I stared at the computer, unable to believe that after all my hard work—after doing everything right—it was all for nothing.

Dazed, I went out to the kitchen to put dinner on for the family. I kept telling myself to pull it together, there was nothing I could do about it, not to take my disappointment out on the kids…but the trouble was that I didn’t understand why I had failed. I’d done everything right!

Christian walked in the door after work, saw the stricken look on my face, and asked what was wrong. As I stumbled out the story, I mentioned the note at the bottom of the first rejection: “It said check whether you were sending in rich text or HTML, but I’ve submitted to this site before and never had any problem…isn’t Yahoo mail on plain text anyway?”

Did I mention the word “stricken”? You should have seen the look on his face. “I changed it to rich text two weeks ago,” he said, “when I was sending out news releases for your Advent book from your account. I didn’t change it back, because I thought it would look better…”

In every situation, there are lessons to be learned. In this one, I learned that sometimes, **** happens, and it’s nobody’s fault. I learned that sometimes, even being obsessive compulsive isn’t enough. And I learned a new meaning for the adage about the road to hell being paved by good intentions.

Published in: on November 17, 2010 at 6:23 am  Comments (10)  
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The View From A High Place

Every now and again on the journey of life, it’s like you come to a high place, and as you stand on the crest of that hill, the panorama of your life spreads before you in the low places, stretching 364 degrees. The only part you can’t see is the future, a narrow sliver of reality, an unknown entity that could be seventy seconds or seventy years long. And everything you see makes sense. You can see all the connections, all the causalities.

Tonight is the fifteenth anniversary of my first date with the man who became my husband. Maybe it’s tiresome—saccharine, even—to mark this date, but I always do.

Perhaps it was because the anniversary fell on choir night this year. As we stood before the group, running through announcements before dismissal, all of a sudden I couldn’t stop storytelling. But not about the date itself—about the night that he asked me out.

All Saints Day was a chilly day in 1995, but not bitter. I must have been stressed, because when I walked from the fine arts building over to the Newman Center, the sight of the sun sinking over run-down rental houses called me to sit on the steps and rest. I remember nothing about that sunset except that afterward, the knot of anxiety was gone …and that the entire time I sat there, I was wondering if Christian had arrived yet. We’d been in the choir together for a mere three weeks, and he was on my mind a lot.

When I went inside, it was still early, but he was there. The next thing I remember is that the choir was headed to the Heidelberg for dinner after Mass, and I debated not going; I didn’t really know the choir members yet, and they all enough older than me that I felt like that annoying kid that has to hang with the grownups. But I went…probably in the hopes that Christian would come, too. But he wasn’t there, and I sat at the end of the long table, with no one across from me. I tried to participate in conversation without being annoying. I ordered toasted ravioli and a salad. And just when I had given up all hope, he walked in the door at the far end of the room. And walked around the table. And sat down across from me.

At some point in the next hour (forty minutes? Two hours? Time kind of disappeared)), I realized that he and I had retreated into our own little world. The rest of the choir shared conversation with each other, but we were oblivious. Afterward, he gave me a ride home in the dark, with a business card—the opening volley in the Game. I knew what needed to be done with it, but I had no idea how to phrase my interest gracefully.

From such beginnings…
 

Once the doors of memory are open, I start seeing other snippets of my past. The night when we walked from the Missouri Theater to Shakespeare’s for a late-night snack with my parents after a performance. (Me? Did I ever actually do things like that?) Walking downtown hand in hand on cold nights. Being out and about at eleven and midnight—hours we never, ever keep these days, even at New Year’s, because we prefer to be rested when the kids wake up. The little adjustments that happened automatically, like learning to drink water instead of soda, because it would be impolite to order something more expensive than Christian did. From my high vantage point, I can see the cogs interlocking, snapping into place like pieces of a puzzle. Despite the years of doubt and overwhelming anxiety that kept us from getting married for four years, we were two becoming one from the earliest days.

So much we didn’t know yet—so much contained in that sliver of the future which now is the past. Infertility, Down syndrome….all part of a shadowy future that we didn’t bother trying to penetrate. A shadowy future that now gleams jewel-bright, a handful of tiles among many.

But the hour grows late, and the clarity of late night gives way to exhaustion. And so I leave the past behind, return to my living room, my glider rocker and ottoman, the flowered sofa and the streetlight starburst on the far wall, and turn to face the sliver that is the future. I can’t penetrate its mists, and sometimes the thought of the future, with its rocks and slippery slopes, overwhelms me. But at least the view from the high place reminds me that all life is a mosaic, and that each piece offers its own fragment of the answers I will need.

Published in: on November 4, 2010 at 7:07 am  Comments (11)  
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Come Away With Me

For the first time in our five years as parents, we left the kids with my parents and took a weekend away.

We flew to Tampa on Friday for a wedding, and after a bit of a rough start, we felt our way back into coupledom. Bonnie was passing by on its eastbound, spill-cleanup-disrupting run, and we ate dinner at Rod & Reel on Anna Maria, at the edge of a tropical storm.

The waitress told us that a couple hours before we arrived, all the skimmer ships had been sitting in a line a bit north of the restaurant, as they abandoned the cleanup effort. The tiny pier held a fluctuating crowd of forty to eighty people, some fishing, some coming upstairs to eat, but apparently this was a molasses-slow day; usually a table at this place entails a two-hour wait. The owner told us he was considering closing early due to weather. (!) The wind pummeled the poor birds, the waves lashed at the pier, but the food was terrific.

It was well past sunset when we left and began meandering our way back down the island to Longboat Key and the condo. Along the way, we stopped so I could say hello to the Gulf of Mexico.

By dark, the rain had at last cleared out, and the winds along with it. I expected the surf to continue crashing all night, but it was as if, following the passage of the storm, the Gulf went to sleep. We took red velvet and cheese cake out to the beach and sat listening to the low grumble. And in the morning, we entertained guests: my uncle and aunt came to spend the morning at the beach.

Although off in the distance, the storm still pounded the Gulf, it was a perfect day at the beach. Uncle Matt and I spent an hour body-surfing the waves, which had sprung back up due to the distant storm. We had to convince Christian and Patti to come join us, but in the end we prevailed. (But I don’t have a waterproof camera, so I can’t share that.)

After lunch, we showered for the wedding and headed up to St. Petersburg, where we spent an hour in the Sunken Gardens…sweating profusely, reinforcing our certainty that we will never, never, NEVER be more than visitors in Florida. (Item: in Florida, the air conditioning is set at approximately 40 degrees. Thus, whenever you go inside you nearly shut down from hypothermia, and when you walk outside, your glasses immediately fog up. Every time. In case you didn’t know this, consider yourself warned.)

And then the camera broke. Oh, well. It ate batteries, anyway.

After a beautiful wedding on the beach, we returned to the condo to stare up at a full moon and stars that twinkled, improbably bright. Outside our window, the silhouette of two palm trees framed the darkness of the ocean. It is the first time in years that I have actually gotten to enjoy a night landscape without the interference of street lights, headlights, security lights. I had forgotten how something that would ordinarily seem pitch black is actually only murky gray.

But most of all, we spent thirty-six hours simply being two become one. Holding hands as we walked. Being quiet. Not talking about the kids…much. The partnership that we have developed these past few years served us well when we were by ourselves. We reveled in the freedom of solitude, of traveling without strollers and diapers and kids to entertain, of (gasp!) quiet in the back seat.

Frankly, as much as I felt the heart-tug when we talked to the munchkins on the phone, I wasn’t ready to return to the chaos that met us instantaneously upon returning home. But I sigh, I shrug, I wax philosophical and remind myself that endless as it seems, this stage of life will pass away soon enough.

In the meantime, I am so, so grateful for the gift.

holy experience

Mamarazzi Monday

 

youcapture 4-1

Published in: on July 26, 2010 at 5:45 am  Comments (9)  
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Beadwork (or: the origin of motherhood)

Motherhood Moments

It hangs in the the closet, tucked in the back with all the other clothes I don’t wear anymore, flowing concert black and high school prom red…

Like another of my blog friends, I, too, like to pull it out and put it on once in a while, as my mother did when we were little. And Alex, who after attending a wedding recently is newly intrigued by this weird grownup ritual of wearing impossible-to-keep-clean, really big dresses, insisted upon being photographer instead of one of the subjects.

So, for a few brief, glorious minutes, I got to be my bride-self again…the juxtaposition of who I once was with who I have become: flowing satin amid piles of laundry, and jammie-clad little ones on my lap.

And when it was done, we resumed our routine as if nothing had happened. Resumed the world of books, prayers, tucking in, and procrastinating by protesting that the radio is hissing, by screeching for water…

…to the ordinary tasks of cutting hair…hair that once was all black, but now begins to turn white at the temples.

Beadwork and tuxedos. That is where motherhood begins: in a union of two who become one, whose union becomes enfleshed again and again. Praise God.

***

(Note: yes, I am very proud of the fact that eleven years and three children later, I can still wear my wedding dress.)

youcapture 4-1

Published in: on July 22, 2010 at 5:31 am  Comments (7)  

Of Husbands on Father’s Day


Father & Daughter
Originally uploaded by Enigma Photos
 
 
 

 

Okay, ladies, I’ll keep this short and sweet.

How did you celebrate Mother’s Day, and what do you have planned for Father’s Day?

There is a tremendous inequality in the way we approach these two holidays, and the guys get the short shrift. I mean, the kiddos are still in school on Mom’s day, and they bring home lots of adorable homemade gifts for us—you know, the ones that make us all go sniffle snuffle, even those of us (like me) who were hardened against kids’ crafts. But by Dad’s day, the kids are out of school and we’re trying to adjust to occupying the same space again without a) boredom, or b) World War III.

I think we women tend to get very self-absorbed in the sacrifices we make, the dreams we give up or the conflict between our work and our parenthood. The men have these same struggles, but because they don’t talk about it so much, we tend to forget.

Today, I set forth a challenge, for myself as well as for all of you. Let’s make this Father’s Day special for our husbands. For the men who are our partners, our best friends, our voice of reason and our sounding boards.

What will you do to make his day special?

***

Linking up with SteadyMom’s 30-Minute Blog Challenge and with

tuesdays unwrapped at cats

Published in: on June 15, 2010 at 5:24 am  Comments (8)  
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A Change of Acoustics

The day was not off to a promising start. My three little angels had had me up eight times in seven hours. And instead of sleeping in, they woke up before I managed to accomplish anything in my early-morning work time.

And they couldn’t pick a low-stress day to do it, either. No, this Memorial Day weekend was one of our busy weekends: two weddings, air show, golf, a room to paint. I sent Christian off to enjoy his outing and dragged the kids, kicking and screaming, to the farmer’s market and the grocery store.

(Let me interject that whoever invented the side-by-side double stroller should have his or her head examined. Little ones will find ways to torment each other in any case, but being side by side is just enabling!)

And don’t even get me started on grocery carts with cars on the front, and coexisting in those. Or, for that matter, on little girls enamored of their independence. How can you concentrate on grocery shopping when your three-year-old who can’t talk disappears every thirty seconds? I begin to understand the appeal of those stupid baby leashes 

By the time we got home, I just wanted them all to take naps. At 9:30 in the morning. (Riiiiiight.) So I did the next best thing. I put one down for nap and set the other two up with computer game and video. In separate rooms. Where no one could push, get in the other’s face, or take toys from each other. And I went to clean the house.

I often pause on the morning of a wedding gig to reflect on the difference between a wedding day and The Wedding Day. For the couple, the parents, and many of the guests, this day consumes every waking moment. We the musicians, on the other hand, are frequently still unshowered and frantically cleaning the house up till half an hour before we leave.

Well, anyway. By noon, I was in a foul mood: running on fumes, mad at my kids, and ready to vent the whole putrid mess on the first adult to express sympathy obligated to listen. In other words, my husband. Only I couldn’t. Because if I did, it would ruin the enjoyment of his morning, and he’d feel guilty for leaving me with the mess.

So I swallowed it. Mostly.

Two hours later, I stood at the ambo singing the psalm. And all of a sudden, something changed. I had sung this same psalm a week earlier at our own parish and barely registered the beauty of the melody, the prayer in the words: Lord, here I am, I have come to do your will. Here I stand; send me forth, I long to do your will.

Maybe it was the change of acoustics. Lourdes is a very neutral space in which to sing. Live enough, but muted by wall panels, so the noise of our parish’s many, many children doesn’t overwhelm all else. Singing in the Newman Center, on the other hand, feels a lot like singing in the basketball arena—wide open and zinging with reverberation.

Or maybe it was because I was standing in the church where we were married, singing the psalm that Lesley had sung at our wedding, ten years and some change earlier.

All I know is that after that psalm, the day was different.

The wedding finished early enough that we decided to complete the grocery shopping on the way home. We walked into Aldi in flowing, beaded gauze and tuxedo tails, and chuckled as eyes widened and followed us. We were like newlyweds. We laughed, we teased, we joked our way through the grocery store, free of the usual weight we carry.

Sometimes the weight of the future frightens me. I know that every little snip and snap that I allow past my lips today multiplies into mean-spiritedness and hatefulness in the future, and that within the busy-ness of parenthood, we must be an active partner in renewing our marriage. Sex and an occasional date just don’t cut it. Lip service to God as a partner doesn’t cut it. We still have to make those daily choices, even when our spouse doesn’t reciprocate. When I hear about couples like the Gores, splitting after forty years, I have to admit to a niggling doubt. I’m not satisfied with a marriage that merely lasts. I want us to be more in love at eighty than we were at twenty-five.

But afternoons like that day at Aldi, following the wedding, remind me that it is possible. We just have to look for ways to tweak the acoustics of our life together, and hear the music in a new way. And in doing so, we rediscover ourselves.

9/4/99

Published in: on June 2, 2010 at 7:14 am  Comments (8)  
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50 (the magic number)

Part One: Fifty seconds.

Ears popping, rising ninety-five floors above overtired children, train schedules, bad bus directions and the guy on the street corner screaming about the end of the world. And at the end of it, the doors opened on this:

 

It was our tenth anniversary dinner, six months late, the first of two dates we set up in Chicago this weekend.

All morning at the planetarium, watching the top of the Hancock tower appear and disappear in swirling clouds, we wondered what we would be able to see when we went to dinner that night. But the sky retreated a bit, and we sat beside the soaring windows and chatted softly, minds and bodies slowly easing into the moment. It was almost seven before I remembered that I hadn’t left a menu list for Christian’s brother and sister-in-law, who were watching the kids back at the hotel.

The meal? Oh, of course, it was absolutely amazing. I didn’t expect anything else. But it was the respite, the chance to re-center and rediscover two made one, that made the experience what it was. And on toward sunset, the light around and below us shifted from smoldering gray to clear blue-white.

And although we went right back to the world of late buses and almost-missed trains, the quiet buzz remained, and carried me off into a deep sleep almost as soon as I hit the pillow.

Part B: Fifty minutes.

Date #2 was not so amenable to public transportation, so we drove downtown, leaving far too early for an 8p.m. concert because our hosts/babysitters didn’t know how bad construction traffic might be. Fifty minutes after we left the hotel, we pulled into a parking lot snugged up against the wall of the Symphony Center. With an hour and ten minutes left before the concert, we set off to visit Buckingham Fountain.
 

It was a relaxed, though windy and chilly, walk, and at the end of it we returned to Michigan Avenue…

 

…and made our way to our seats in the front row of the gallery, where we settled in for two hours of sheer musical bliss.

 

Any classical concert is a balm to my soul, but to watch one of the best orchestras in the world, on its home turf—that is a dream come true. Check it off the bucket list, and savor the moment for years to come.

What did you do for Mom’s Day?

Sweet Shot Day

tuesdays unwrapped at cats

Seven Clown Circus

Published in: on May 11, 2010 at 5:37 am  Comments (9)  
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