Marriage Monday

Traveling With My Husband

You may be newly married, married for the second time, or retired. Or you may be slogging through the middle years that seem to stretch out forever, in between toddlers and college graduates. No matter where you are on the journey, e-Dad and I urge couples to stay married. We've been together for a very long time now and we treasure our shared history.

So many of our fondest memories include a trip to somewhere. We celebrated our very first anniversary in San Francisco. Over the course of that remarkable three-day weekend, we must have ridden on every form of public transportation known to man: airplane, taxi, subway, and of course, cable car (ding! ding!).

We began our liason way back in college (university) traveling on packed Greyhound buses back and forth across the Canada-U.S. border at Blaine, Washington. I was a student at U.B.C. and e-Dad was enrolled at Seattle Pacific. After our engagement, I made the leap and moved south, gaining a new husband and a new citizenship all in one fell swoop—y'all!

My extended family still lives in British Columbia, so by now we know the stretch of freeway between Seattle and Vancouver a little too well, eh? We've been crossing borders and exploring new vistas much further afield ever since. Suffice to say, we really love to travel. Our favorite destination? Any place with sandy beaches and swaying palms.

Related: Here's a compelling excerpt from a story by
Scot McKnight which echoes our sentiments about staying married. Published by CT's Out of Ur.

The Story Called Us

"Kris and I have been married for thirty-five years. We grew up in the same community; our fathers coached together; we were boyfriend and girlfriend in grade school and junior high. We got serious as sophomores in high school and got married as sophomores in college. (Not what we recommended for our two kids.)

Here's my point: nearly everything about each of our lives is known to the other. Furthermore, in our daily conversations, we draw on our collective memory of our thirty-five years of life together, and it is now rare that one of us says something about the past that the other one doesn't already know. Our stories are reminders, not revelations, of our past together. They glue our stories into one story. Admittedly, that we grew up together gives our collective memory a dimension that most don't know, but my point is not so much about marrying someone from your hometown as staying married.

From anthropologists to theologians to those who write technically about story-telling, thinkers today remind us over and over that who we are emerges from the story we tell ourselves. Our identity swells from our story. Divorce inevitably rips chapters and pages and paragraphs from the identity-shaping story that guides our everyday. Those who are divorced, in the presence of a variety of audiences, are driven to modify or silence chapters of their story. In effect, they can only be partially visible in many, if not most, contexts. They can tell only parts of their story.

A good reason to stay married, I am contending, is to keep your story intact and to let that story develop over time by adding new chapters that deepen earlier ones. Good stories have drama, and perhaps the rough patches in a marriage will someday be redeemed by the memory that those patches, too, were part of the story we wove into one story, the story called Us."

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Today is Marriage Monday

Christine at Fruit in Season is our lovely guest hostess for Marriage Monday. Today's topic is "Traveling With My Husband." Please consider writing a post on this subject and then linking up at Christine's. I hope you'll also take few minutes to visit the other Marriage Monday sisters. You'll be blessed!

Your Feedback Please

Lately, e-Dad and I have been thinking about putting some of the marriage wisdom shared here at Chrysalis into ebook-form. However, we would love to have your input first. In the comment box on this post, would you be kind enough to answer the following question:

In your marriage, what’s your biggest problem, frustration, fear, or challenge?

Whatever you struggle with the most, I'd like to know about it. That way e-Dad and I can address those issues in our book. (Your remarks may be included, but only with your permission, of course.)

Chocolate Giveaway

Just to sweeten the pot, I'm holding a chocolate giveaway. THREE random winners will receive a bar of chocolate for donating your time to this project. Click here for more details.

Chocolate winners will be announced on Tuesday July 7, 2009.

Photos: baldi & maximili (Flickr)