My husband and I have been married for nine years. Nine years ago, I cascaded down a grand staircase inside a beautiful chateau. The day was picture-perfect, but our lives have not been so.
This is not a shock to anyone reading this, but as a twenty-two-year-old standing in a lace wedding gown across from the man of her dreams, it didn’t occur to me then.
The last five years have been the hardest of my life, of his life, too. It started with a prenatal diagnosis of Down syndrome for our son, an open-heart surgery for him later, a miscarriage, and a tumultuous pregnancy with our youngest child that resulted in fetal surgery.
Our hard times were defined by long periods of waiting, stretches of doubt, and a general darkness that enveloped our home and our hearts.
We were equally grieved, but for the most part, we handled these times completely opposite from one another.
When we got our son’s Down syndrome diagnosis, I was glued to the computer. I joined support groups, looked up the latest research, and read articles by other parents. My husband did none of that. He needed to wait until our son arrived.
I wanted to talk, my husband did not.
So, how did we get through when we grieved so differently? Two things: We accepted each other’s differences and met half way and when one of us was in the pit, the other stayed above ground.
I respected that he wanted to talk very little and he respected that I wanted to talk very much. I gave him his space, but when I felt I would burst, he listened and processed with me.
And when I was having a day when I could barely put a foot in front of the other, he made my steps lighter, even though he was also suffering. He would find an ounce of hope and shine it brightly so I could see. And I did the same for him.
We were each broken, but we didn’t let our marriage shatter.
A family pastor recently told us that not every couple is as strong as us, that not everyone can make it through what we’ve been through. I suppose he could be right, but the way we looked at it was this: we were all each other had.
Each of us felt deeply grieved for not only ourselves but for the other person. For the most part, we put each other above our individual grief, and on days when that was too hard for one of us, the other held the pieces together.
In doing so, our marriage came out stronger on the other side of heartache.
Now when we go through hard, but more minor things, we remember what we learned when we were in the depths: we are different, but we belong to one another. Life is hard, but our marriage doesn’t have to be.
In fact, when the hard hits, our marriage, is the soft place in which we land.
*Dear reader, receiving our son’s prenatal Down syndrome diagnoses was one of the hardest times in our lives. However, we feel very differently about our son’s diagnosis today. We do not grieve his extra chromosome but celebrate it. Read my most popular Down syndrome post, here.
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*how to get through tough times in marriage
