It is not your love that sustains the marriage–but from now on, your marriage that sustains the love.                                   Dietrich Bonhoeffer

How many iterations can love take in a lifetime? I intend to find out.

The Husband and I started as friends, in a brilliant move of grace that knew how hard-won my trust is, how walls are more comfortable to me than bridges and how I attempt to transform standoffishness into a performance piece. There was a year of waiting before it became more, a year that–thanks again to grace–was not lost but only deepened and cemented that friendship. I had abandoned hope that it would become anything more, not knowing the best part–that we were building a foundation for a lifetime together, a lifetime that would sustain so much more than viewings of Lost and laughter over drinks. I had no idea that a year of waiting would be an element of our story that would witness to me years later, that would remind me of the hope of more, of the glory–and evidence–of all we cannot see.

I cling to that hope now, daily.

This past weekend we had one rough night, one out of dozens of (relatively speaking) good ones, and it was enough to undo me. On the couch the next morning, with The Kid hanging off my chest and TH sitting near us, I broke down. I felt misunderstood, overburdened, circling a field of hopelessness. But worst of all, I feared that the inches between us on the couch were becoming metaphorical miles, that having a child was alienating us from each other, changing our relationship to one of terse conversations about poop quality and battling philosophies about crying. There was an edge present, bolstered by sleeplessness and piercing wails, that was absent in all those Manhattan bars.

Or maybe it was just me. After all, TH was peacefully playing Madden ’08 before all hell broke loose on my face, tears and snot commingling in a way they never had for those Lost viewings, when my hair was washed and I wasn’t wearing sweats.

How does marriage survive children?

It wouldn’t, if I were in it with anyone else. That I haven’t gone insane is a testament to grace and to TH’s character more than evidence of any strength of my own. As the tears splattered down and I added to TK’s cries with my own–“I feel like a crazy person! I don’t know what’s wrong with me!”–TH’s face flickered fear briefly, then flashed reassurance. “Maybe I won’t go on that retreat this weekend,” he said. Then he secured an hour away for me later that day. This in addition to myriad other examples: pizza ordered when the idea of cooking slays me, loans paid on my behalf when the news of a pregnancy fires me, patience with my quoting of the very child-care books that are driving me crazy, my neuroses regarding housecleaning and pacifier sterilization. And the volunteering on his part from the very beginning–a partial work week to accommodate a God-given but so far worldly-unpaid desire to write. A belief in me that, many days, goes entirely underserved were it not for faith in what is more than sweats and dirty hair and hormones.

He scooted over on the couch, toward me when a lesser man would have ventured away, and held me, puddle of water that I had become. The Kid–fully fed now and temporarily quiet–sat nearby in his bouncy seat, unaware of the relationship going on in his midst, the love that founded him and endures his unknowing assaults. Anyone who would have walked in at that moment would have seen an unwashed mess, a barely-holding-it-together trio. But anyone who would have walked in at that moment would have been uninvited. Our party of three is held together by more than what can be seen; marriage is nothing if not a promise.