Marriage Is Easy {According to my Husband}

Many years ago, I was squished into the messy backseat of Angel's 2-door car while he and our friend J. took the captain chairs in front. We were eating the food we'd just picked up from the drivethru while parked in the McDonald's parking lot because it was really cold outside and we'd arrived at McD's just after their dining room closed for the night.

{Such an old picture but I still love it.}

During my freshman year of college, the 3 of us were usually together. A senior nursing student, a senior engineering student, and a freshman Mandarin Chinese major. I was innocently munching away on my hamburger when J. declared, "Who ever said marriage had to be hard?"

The guys really started going off on this topic--the main idea being that every message that we young people get these days is that marriage is one of the hardest things you'll ever do and you'll have to really work for it and you better be 100% sure you're not making a terrible mistake when you take those vows because marriage has the potential to ruin your life. Their conclusion that night, the boisterous opinion of single college seniors in their early 20s, was that marriage could be easy. There seemed to be no reason, in their minds, why one had to approach marriage as if it would be a difficult challenge, a hard burden to bear.

I sat there, giggling in the backseat. I take a rather more complex view on the topic--being married to terrible people, criminals and murderers and abusers and selfish ingrates, obviously makes many people's lives and marriages very hard indeed. That evening, though, I giggled as I heard these two friends of mine declare, without any experience in the matter, that it was completely possible for people to be married and to find that an easy relationship to navigate.

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The funny thing is, Angel still sticks to that idea once hashed out in the parking lot of McDonald's all those years ago. To this day, he'll still say that his only experience of marriage is that it's "easy."

Granted, this is the same person who can move to two countries in two years, making a major career change and lifestyle shift and be like: "no big deal." Oh, he also doesn't think nursing school is nearly as hard or overwhelming as everyone acts like it is. And he was a nurse specializing in burn care for 5 years and didn't always think the schedule was a lot of fun or hospital policy changes, either, but the actual work wasn't hard--so he says. So, take his opinion knowing that he doesn't see any challenge he's ever faced as a challenge at all. He goes through life seeing himself as spoiled rotten with the awesome education and opportunities and wife he's gotten, and thinks he doesn't deserve any of it. Some people are proud of themselves for what they accomplish in the face of adversity. Angel isn't proud of himself and doesn't think he's ever faced adversity. Most people who knew his story would say that he has, but it doesn't occur to him to view his own life that way.

I've long found this an interesting and attractive quality. In a world where people are proud of pulling themselves up by their bootstraps--where they declare boldly that they are self-made--where people are offended at the mere suggestion that they had rich parents and a privileged lifestyle, and that contributes to their education and success as adults...I'm intrigued by this guy who, if you ask, will never claim that he's worked hard for all the good things in his own life. He sees life and everything in it as an an unmerited gift, and would see it as sheer ungratefulness to look at the good marriage he's been gifted with and call it anything other than "easy."

My thoughts haven't changed too much from the thoughts I had back then, as a 17 year old. I'm not nearly as confident in the ability to say "Marriage is easy" like it's some kind of fact. Because much of the world doesn't experience the marriage relationship as easy. The logical side of my brain doesn't allow one marriage to be a proof-text for such an outlandish statement.

And while I am not naturally the sort of person to ignore my own accomplishments, I appreciate the goodness and grace in refusing to dramatize our own little difficulties and sufferings. When I don't act like my own immense strength of character has helped me through countless trials, I can actually acknowledge the source of my strength and fortitude (for me, that source is the grace of God). It would be terribly arrogant of me to look back on 5 years of marriage, recall the handful of times that Angel has aroused my feisty Irish temper and nod knowingly to other wives, saying: "Marriage is hard work, guys."

It's from Angel I've learned to remain humble (to some extent, humility is a more challenging concept for me than it is for him), in the face of our mini-challenges, and not over-dramatize my accomplishments in the face of adversity. From him I've learned the beauty of being oh-so-grateful for a love-filled life that I did nothing to earn, rather than trying to stand on my merits and claim that I deserve everything I've ever gotten and more.

So while I remain unwilling to state it as if it were some kind of universal fact, I will say, "Our marriage is easy." In fact, the past five-going-on-six years together have been a piece of cake, flavored with long walks at the cemetery and shared grocery shopping trips, frosted with feelings of homesickness swirled with the after-effects of pranks that make me laugh so hard I think I'll never stop. It's got sprinkles of impatience and uncertainty but there's a great big dollop of head-over-heels, never-though-it-would-happen-to-me kinda love to top it off.

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{Postscript: I had Angel read this post before publishing. His response was that he thinks the reason he views marriage is easy is because he's married to me, and anyone would find it easy to be married to me. I'm still convinced that this whole "Marriage is Easy" thing is much more about the kind of person he is and the way he views life than the actual marriage experience...but I'll take the compliment, nonetheless. Which, in turn, proves that my journey of learning humility is still in progress.}

{P.P.S: Also, because "Marriage is easy!" is pretty much the only advice Angel would ever give on the topic, I'm also linking up with #LoveBlog today. I'm not claiming it's the most helpful advice in the world...but hopefilled, it is.}

What do you think?