Matt and I took the plunge 9 years ago.  We got married.  We had a beautiful day and we remember all of it.  There were an appropriate number of “that will be funny in 5 minutes/5 years” mishaps for a Jaime and Matt event.  We can’t fathom the point of doing something if you can’t at least get a story out of it!

Some of our anniversaries have felt like a taking a shared zipline through the rainforest at sunset across the finish line.  Spectacular and adventurous.

Some of our anniversaries have felt like dragging our parched and dehydrated selves across the finish line in a desert on our scratched up hands and knees.  Painful and “let’s never speak of this again.”

And this one… this 9 years of marriage anniversary?  Well, it feels like apathy.  “Ah, 9 years.  Okay then.”

At first, I thought that sounded far more painful than the desert anniversary!  “Meh” and lack of discernible feelings are NOT appropriate responses to marriage!  Right???

It has not been a year of epic highs.  But we also did not plunge to the ravine below and dash ourselves among craggy rocks and crocodile teeth.  We didn’t quit.  We didn’t visit the dastardly lows of previous years of marriage.  We’ll definitely see better in the future, we’ll definitely see worse.  Here we are, somewhere in between.

Not in between in a good way, like, “Yeah, everything is good.  We’re cruising across the ocean in our seaworthy vessel, the sky is clear, we’ll probably find land exactly 3 months before our supplies run out.  Onward.”

We are in between in a dangerous way.  As in, “Well, we’ve been climbing this mountain for nine years now.  We didn’t encounter any sliding gravel patches that shredded us to bits and set us back 6 months like we did lower down.  And we can’t see the top anymore, so sunsets don’t drop behind the peaks… the sun just disappears and we get cold.  Then it comes back and we get warm.  We can’ see the top or the bottom right now.  Eh… why am I even working so hard to hold this position?  I spent a year not falling… shouldn’t I have spent this year climbing?”

And why can’t we climb?  Well, we encumber one another!  Matt is always getting in my way and I am always getting in his.  Not to mention how our kids are certain that the only point of this climb is to give them a thrilling ride.  We could keep climbing our marriage mountain and choose separate paths.  We could fall and die.  We could fall and die and not care.  We could stop moving and never see anything ever again.  We could stick together and drag one another along in the slow tedium that teamwork requires and continue thinking, “You know, this would be a LOT easier if I didn’t have to haul you AND myself AND all of our gear AND those dangling cuties that will surely be damaged if we don’t proceed with caution and intentionality!”

We’re not so far in that we don’t remember the freedom of deciding things on our own.  But we’re too far in to disentangle our equipment without both of us severing ourselves into shreds.

Can we celebrate a situation like that?

I think we can.  We have already committed to stay.  We can choose to move slowly and allow for one another.  We can hold steady.  Because getting to the top implies the work… but doing the work without seeing ahead or behind is pure tenacity.  And it’s far more impressive than telling the story later… we are living the story.  It hurts.  It gouges away the parts of us that aren’t necessary for this task.  And sometimes it feels lonely.

We sincerely appreciate all who are climbing around us.  So many people have entangled their gear with ours as they commit to our success.  “We’re watching.  We’ll let the kids dangle from us for a bit until you can get somewhere more firm.  We’ll share this ledge with you… take a rest.  We’ll encourage you with megaphones… we’ll encourage you with love.  If you slip, we’ll offer a hand before you fall.  We all want you to succeed.”

And the thing is, we have a marriage.  Our ropes aren’t made out of us.  They are made out of Jesus.  He holds us together.  He patiently waits while we quibble about who ate the last of the Elven bread.  He whispers to us and reminds us that He built the mountain and He built us for the mountain.

So nine years.  Somehow, we got here.  And somehow, we’ll get past here.  Lots of things depend on us – our family health, our kids, our friends and neighbors who need us to support them just as much as we need them to support us.  But most of all, Matt and I are most invested in this.  The mystery of marriage is that God views us as one flesh… and somehow, we have become that.  We have no other way to survive but to do it together.  And seriously, there isn’t anyone else I’d rather be symbiotically joined to!