At Home

When we get married, we don’t start with a blank slate. Both spouses bring patterns and viewpoints shaped by years in their families of origin. Leaving and cleaving requires us to make a new space in our hearts, one that is shaped by the past and carries remnants of our lives up until then while also giving us a place to build our marriage relationship.

As much as we leave and cleave, our families of origin don’t disappear, our previous friendships don’t instantly evaporate, and we still need to navigate community, church, and jobs. Our marriage should become the most important earthly relationship, but it doesn’t automatically eliminate everything else in our lives.

I’ve been thinking about that a lot since Big Guy and I moved in with his father a little over a year ago. We know how to do our marriage, but doing it in this place that isn’t ours has been an adjustment, especially given the fact that we want to prioritize our marriage without making his dad to feel left out or lonely.

So we just keep at it. We take short walks with each other to have private conversation. We drive four blocks to the gas station together and call it a date. We look for opportunities to hug. We send each other flirty text messages. We don’t have as much time as a couple as we would like, but we use the time we have to continue to build our marriage.

Not-At-Home-Ness

I’ve struggled to feel at home here.

Mostly this stems from the fact that this is still my father-in-law’s house, with the furniture and decorations put in place by my late mother-in-law. Her absence didn’t create a space for me, or for us. We’ve squeezed in along with what was already here.

My lovely hand-crafted desk is crowded into the front parlor so I can have a place to record podcast episodes and do webinars. The audio and lighting aren’t good, but it is a place I can close off for a bit of privacy. Other than my desk and desk chair, the furniture I use is not my own.

I’m not in my own space with the things I love and that have meaning for me. I tend to view the world around me through a lens of frustration and tunnel vision.

This not-at-home-ness has really been getting to me, so today I asked Big Guy to help me carry a small desk upstairs into the attic. The desk used to belong to his grandfather, and we’ve used it off and on over the years in the homes where we’ve lived.

The attic has a room that was finished and used as a bedroom at some point in the distant past. The floorboards are soft and weak now, the paint has mostly rubbed off the baseboards, and the sheetrock is cracked and missing in quite a few spots.

The room is still part of my father-in-law’s house, but it is a place that is separate as well. There are remnants of past residents and screen doors that used to hang on a back porch that no longer exists, but this room is mostly filled with boxes of my books and tubs of my yarn and other crafting supplies. During a house renovation fifteen years ago, the ten-foot ceilings were dropped to become eight-foot ceilings. This has added a sound buffer that didn’t exist before. During the renovation, the small window in this room was replaced with a much larger one.

At this moment I am sitting at a desk that has been ours for years, in a wooden chair that hadn’t been used in decades. I’m so happy to have a space of my own that the disintegrating walls are nearly invisible to me.  Although I can hear the wind outside, I hear no sound at all from the household below me. Everything in this room is mine. Daylight is shining through the window, and my view of the world gives me a new perspective as I look out onto the community.

 I can feel my heartbeat slowing down to the pace it has when I am truly resting. My soul heaves a sigh of relief.

The Cracks in the Wall

Years ago a friend was in my house for the first time and said, “Isn’t it funny how something can seem really strange when we move in but if we don’t change it right away, we just get used to it?” I thought it was a profound statement, even after I realized that she said it as she was looking at the neon green shower curtain rings that held up a non-green non-neon pastel shower curtain.

We learn to live with things in our marriages as well, don’t we? We hang on to things that no longer serve a function, just like the rusted screen doors sitting behind me. Some things just become quirks, sort of like the neon shower curtain rings that didn’t keep us from using the shower. However, other things can lead to problems. Cracks appear, and instead of putting in the work to prevent the cracks from getting larger and becoming holes, we put it off so long that eventually we become used to them.

Show Up and Do the Work

Just like marriage, this room isn’t a blank slate. It needs a lot of work to become a very good workspace. I don’t know how much I’ll be able to do with it. The room is without electricity or any heating or cooling (although an extension cord allows me to plug in my computer, a lamp, and a space heater or fan. Repairing all the brokenness in this room might take more time and money than I have available, and it might never be a lovely office space. The cracks in these walls have been here a long enough time that they are probably more quirks than they are structural problems.

Although it may never be a perfect office space, it will be a good space where I can write and just catch my breath from time to time. And even if I’m not able to do any repair work, just showing up and using this space to do my work is all it takes to make it an office. At this moment, it is already functioning as an office. I showed up, and I’m doing the work.

Our marriage has been a little like that, too. Big Guy and I will never be perfect at this marriage thing. Without much time for ourselves, it’s been a bit of a challenge. But you know what? We keep spending time together and loving each other. And that’s a big part of what it takes to keep our marriage growing. We show up, and we do the work.

Even though this house doesn’t feel like home to me, I’ve realized that my husband does. When I’m with him, and it’s just us, the fact that this isn’t our home ceases to matter. What matters is that we both showed up for each other. With each other, we are truly at rest.

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I’d like to encourage you to take a look at the cracks in the walls of your own marriage. Is there anything that you’ve just gotten used to over the years? Do you and your husband show up and do the work of maintaining your relationship? What would it make your marriage more lovely than it is now? What would it take for your husband to feel like home for you, and what would it take for you to feel like home for him?

Image credit | Chris Taylor