Seasons of the Heart

Is a good marriage one where you gradually become more and more alike over the years? You know, the ones where people start to say you look alike, speak alike, and act alike?  Like two streams running together into one, where the joined currents cut the riverbed deeper and deeper until that path is the only one to take?  Or is it , rather, one where two separate individuals grow more and more into their unique identities, held together by promises and mutual vision, like two oxen yoked to one plow?

I suspect that a healthy marriage is really not so simple as either one or the other, but instead is a mix of the two.  Or perhaps both, just in different ways and a different times.  Its an odd balance though.

At times, all you want is each other. On the big things, you agree.  You flow together in that one riverbed with amazement at how well you complement one another, at the joy and bliss and incredibly fulfilling experience of being one in so many ways.

At other times, its a bit more complicated.  The oxen are yoked, but learning to pull together in one direction is a process. With that basic yet consuming need for one another resting in trust, there are other dreams, other ambitions, other parts of life and living that must be dealt with, and somehow it comes as a surprise that your beloved has different ideas about some of those things.  Sometimes its just as simple as a novel concept, a practice or course they had never considered.  Other times, its becomes more sensitive, when the desire, the dream, the hoped-for course, is something that your mate actively does not want, never wanted, and struggles with.

(I'm not talking about anything harmful or sinful here.  Just the many available options that, for many reasons, we want or don't want.)

Do you sacrifice your direction, your hopes, your desires, giving them up for the discomfort they would cause your spouse?  Do you sacrifice your comfort so that your spouse can pursue cherished aspirations and dreams?  Do you both cling to comfort and end up with a life of the lowest common denominator, a compromise in all things?  Do you both cling to desires and end up pursuing two separate lives under the same roof?

Its a process.  There is amazing growth, both personal and relational, to be had in going with your spouse on the adventures of their heart.  You become so much more than if you just sit in the comfort of your own ways of seeing, doing, being.  It is also a wonderful thing to be given the gift of your loved one's sacrifice in order that you might blossom in ways that are uniquely your own and so desired.

Maybe the truth is that by living together in that mutual pattern of giving and receiving, sacrificing, yet still able to fulfill dreams, you both become uniquely yourselves and yet the same in the most important of ways.

A little cryptic, perhaps.  Just things I've been pondering.