Interruptions, Imperfections

And the goodness of life as it truly is

Last Saturday, I woke up in the normal way, to my husband’s hand on my face, saying here’s your coffee. He took the baby from me and put him in the bouncer. We sit on the couch together, dazed, for maybe 40 seconds before the kids wake up and come running in and want tea or juice or a snack or something, anything.

We all sit in a tumble together on the couch before the day comes bearing down and we read a story from a Bible book for children. We take turns with our chores. Andrew moves the pigs, I milk the cow. I make breakfast. We till a large bed for corn while the kids visit with my mom, and then they help us plant. We go to the building site of our milk barn and the kids play while we work. I make a lunch of leftovers. The kids nap. I clean inside and fold laundry while Andrew works outside. We spend a few hours all together outside again before dinnertime of sausage and eggs. We wash and we go to bed really tired.

This was a normal day. I only tell you about it because of this: Recently we were invited to a wedding and no children were allowed. It was out of town, so I asked if we could bring our nursing baby and they said no, as they didn’t want anything disrupting the ceremony. They wanted it to be perfect. I expected this because I hear it often along with people referring to a wedding day as “the best day of our lives”. These kind of thoughts are what spawns the iconic bridezillas and also (more importantly) the really disappointing marriage. Perfect? What world are you living in? Don’t you know how it is down here?

We had a happy wedding. It was not even remotely close to perfect. That Saturday I was telling you about? That day we were happier than on our wedding day. That day we were even more in love, and better suited to love one another. It was just an average day, and every single day is like it. We are growing in happiness and comfortableness and grace and understanding and knowledge of one another. We are growing as a family, and it’s hard to imagine now how we were even happy before these kids who drive us nuts. (Not that you can’t be happy without kids, but that these kids are his will for us, and as we meet them we learn the perfection of it.)

Since we’ve been married my husband has, time and again, given me genuine long-suffering love, and he has given me forbearance. He has shown me that he won’t leave when I am faithless and ugly and angry. He has cleaned up my vomit, rushed me to the ER, held my body in anguish, taken responsibility for my mistakes and rebuilt our house and our dreams with worn-out tools. How could the days not be sweeter after that?

The wedding is wonderful, but it’s meant to just be the seedling start. It’s supposed to be weird as your weird families come together, and awkward as you try not to think about how much you just want to be alone with each other, and nerve-wracking as others watch you dance which is something you never do or feed each other cake or get tongue-tied saying the words you’ve dreamt of saying for years. And yes, a baby might fuss a little or Grandma Sandy might sneeze or Uncle Steve might open a peppermint or an ambulance might go by (how dare that loser stroke-out at 4 pm on a Saturday?) or one of your bridesmaids might almost pass out (true story! I didn’t even notice) and this will make the brief moment of the ceremony less awe-inspiring and slightly humorous and not altogether about you. What a gift.

On all your normal Saturdays, you will need to know this gift of an imperfect and humorous life. You will need to be strong enough to weather interruptions and human frailty and gracious enough to admit, even in your best moments, that you are but men at best, achingly normal, and in need of someone who will swear not to forsake you and place a cup of coffee in your shaking hand every morning until death parts you.

And so when someone says they want their wedding day to be perfect and the best day of their lives, I think Oh I hope not. I hope that doesn’t come true for you. I hope the best is yet to come.

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Hurricane Helene took out our front porch, so this Easter wreath is our altar of gratitude to God that light indeed comes after darkness. Helen tucked little pink wood sorrel flowers around my boxwood, and the vines are from our muscadines. With all the huge trees we lost, we are indeed very happy to be alive, and we had never considered that enough before.

“Let us love and sing and wonder, let us praise the Savior’s name. He has hushed the law’s loud thunder, he has quenched Mt Sinai’s flame.” -John Newton