It ended with a “Last Word” by Sandra Tsing Loh, abridged from her “Let’s call the whole thing off,” which had appeared in the July/August edition of The Atlantic.
It was about the end of her 20-year marriage.
“The author is ending her marriage.” was the editors’ tagline, “ Isn’t it time you did the same?”
The online version includes a link to this slideshow and voiceover by the author “report[ing] on her divorce from inside her new 10x10 U-Haul storage trailer.”
Frankly, it was the last thing I felt like reading that week –
a week I spent waking up early and staying at work late
to plan and execute a little green scrapbook
of images and memories and inside jokes from each of our ten years.
The article was the last thing I felt like reading.
And yet I felt compelled to read it.
And then I kept thinking about it.
On one hand, it triggered anger and a kind of knee-jerk impulse to dismiss it.
On another hand, it made me sad.
Because for all of the author’s irony and glibness, and tongue-in-cheek (I think) suggestions that, for example,
If high-revving women are sexually frustrated, let them have some sort of French arrangement where they have two men, the post-feminist model dad building shelves, cooking bouillabaisse, and ignoring them in the home, and the occasional fun-loving boyfriend the kids never see…
For all that, words like, “sad[ness],” and “horror,” and “humiliation,’ were woven in there too.
So, I didn’t have to guess at the subtext to know it was also there.
And who am I or anyone else to do anything but try to empathize with someone in an excruciatingly difficult situation,
no matter how s/he chooses to explain or process the getting and the being there—even if s/he turns evangelist for others to choose the same course?
As I reflected on what to say besides, “Wow, what a downer!”
I was reminded of a lunch I had several months ago at Pizzeria Reggina in Boston’s North End with my college friend, roommate, and teammate, Will.
When Will pulled out his silver Blackberry, the waitress yelled at us, “Put that thing away and talk to each other!”
But Will wanted to show me David Brooks’ recent OpEd on the Grant Study (“They Had it Made”) – about a one-of-a-kind longitudinal study, beginning in the 1930s of 268 Harvard men, including among others JFK and Ben Bradlee.
The study followed them from their college days through the rest of their lives.
I think what sent us there was Will’s confession of incessantly reading the bios in the New York Times of the Obama cabinet, and of the insecurity-inducing realization that the seats of power are starting to be occupied by our peers.
And, my God, where are we?
After I scanned the Brooks article (which was inspired by another piece in the Atlantic) on Will’s phone, we talked about how, despite the fact many (not all – and not all who seemed to be bound for it) in the study would go on to accomplishment, and leadership , and success of many stripes, fully a third suffered bouts of mental illness.
Depression was rampant through the sample set.
Particularly in these middle years—which are deeper and longer than post-college fog of the Quarterlife Crisis
-from their late twenties, through their thirties, and into their forties, many were beset by feelings of deep inadequacy –
Where am I?
Who am I?
Where am I headed?
Can I possibly accomplish anything of consequence?
And if not the stress and impatience and self-doubt about achievement and significance in their professional lives,
then in their marriages of 10, or 15, or 20 years, the wondering, “How did I get here?”
nd, if I can find a RESET button, this may be my LAST CHANCE to push it.
As Will and I talked, we settled on what felt like an important verdict for these middle years –
HOLD IT TOGETHER!
JUST HOLD IT
TOGETHER
As part of his homily at our wedding, Jim Moye shared
that even though marriage is often treated like one, it is not a contractual relationship,
where one agrees to do one’s part so long as one’s spouse does theirs.
Instead it is a covenant, where one pledges to love, honor, and cherish come what may.
Deep, deep down I don’t believe it is inevitable that, somewhere in our second decade, Ashley and I will wake up to find our marriage has become a sexless, soul-grinding, ho-hum-ish affair, or, to use Loh’s words, a “companionate…splitting-the-mortgage arrangement.”
At ten years and counting,
to be honest, I am still too much in love to really quite imagine that is even possible.
I still respect.
Still honor.
Still cherish my one and only.
I have too much faith in us,
in our commitment,
in how we are going about this,
in our marriage retreats where,
eyes open about the ways life can drift far, far, far from where we imagined or hoped it would,
we put it all on the table,
and are as deliberate as we can be about understanding where we are and where we’re headed.
And we give ourselves liberty to make big mid-stream changes,
so that we don’t wind up in 5, 10, or 15 years singing and living the Talking Heads:
And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile
And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife
And you may ask yourself-well...how did I get here?
Yet, despite all this,
Despite me,
Despite Ashley,
I don’t want to be naïve about the very real pushes and pulls we will inevitably face.
At 10 years and counting, Sandra Tsing Loh and her husband may have been riding high too.
I have no idea.
So, not because I think I am wiser,
or deeper,
or more committed to each other and the sanctity of marriage,
or better matched,
or because I doubt that our next decades will somehow be free of the very same pushes and pulls, internal and external, that everyone faces in some way shape or form,
the pushes and pulls that have sunk and are sinking so many,
BUT, a little because of Jim,
and his blessing us with his words about marriage as a covenant…
and a little with this new mantra for the middle years of, HOLD IT TOGETHER!...
and a lot the same faith that we tried to put into words when, preparing for our wedding, Ashley wrote Jim, to explain why we had designed our rings full of waves, rough and smooth.
Jim read them to everyone at our service.
Flipping through our wedding book on our 10th anniversary, we found a copy.
Here they are again:
Stefan and I, as we’ve prepared for marriage, have had a strong image in our minds for how Christ wants us to approach this commitment. It centers around the story of Matthew 8 about Jesus asleep in the boat with his disciples when a terrible storm whips the water into a frenzy, swamping the boat and threatening their lives. After the disciples wake him, terrified, and after he’s calmed the sea with his hand, the disciples say to each other, “who is this man that even the wind and the waves obey him?”
This is somehow deeply comforting and challenging to us. We cannot see the years ahead or know how we will feel or think in the years to come. We cannot hope to know the whys of future events or expect the course of our lives to make good sense to us. In simplistic terms, sometimes the seas are placid and sometimes they are tumultuous to the point of death, but in all situations our God is present and even – however inconceivably – in control of the water itself.
We’ve carved waves into our wedding rings (some rough and some smooth) and etched Matthew 8:27 into their insides, but I still don’t think we have a handle on exactly what the promise is that we are holding on to. Partly it is that we will remain committed to each other in all circumstances and through all emotions no matter what because we trust in God’s faithfulness. But even more significantly that image is a symbol that even if the inconceivable were to happen – Stefan or I were to die or abandon each other – even then Christ could stretch out his hand and calm the ocean. I don’t mean that as a cop-out. Just sort of an acknowledgment that God is bigger than everything and his redemptive powers have no outer limits. Our love is a product of that redemption.
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