Growing Together While Apart

One thing that has remained constant from the beginning of our relationship is the fact that we grow closer while we are apart. There have been so many cases where we have been separated. For example, when I would go home for the summers, when we would take a break from our relationship due to irreconcilable differences, and just because we didn’t live at each other’s places (so when we would go home for the night and not see each other until the next day). I have so many memories of this happening. I was coming back to Lubbock, I had been gone all Summer to Fort Worth. This was the first summer since I went to college, so Joel and I had barely even begun dating yet. I had decided over the summer that I didn’t want to date Joel, so as I was returning to Lubbock, we were to just be friends. As friends, he was going to help me move in because my parents were helping my sister move in California. But the moment we saw each other, we were so excited! We smiled all big and hugged, and after we did all of the moving, we are at my favorite place at the time Olive Garden. Another time I recall this was when we would be on a break due to some argument. We would try to not see each other for a week and then get back together to discuss how we felt. When we got back together (probably didn’t even wait out the whole week), we hugged! Not planned, and not expected. And then when we argued a lot, and leave each other in the evenings due to an argument, I would come to school the next day all mad and upset with Joel, but you know what happened the first thing I saw him? I smiled! I was so mad at myself. But I couldn’t stop smiling. So I had to inform him that I was still mad at him, even though I was smiling. But that didn’t really work. I recall walking towards our classroom (we shared a graduate class one semester) and I began to smile thinking about him in there, so I turned around and went to the bathroom to get rid of my smile, because I was really upset with him, but right when I got almost to the classroom door, I smiled again. I couldn’t make the smile stop, I bit my cheek and tongue and nothing worked. So I entered with a huge smile on my face, which always makes Joel smile.

Today, this still shows up in our relationship. Yesterday, I woke up from a nap in a really grumpy mood. And Joel is under a lot of stress with his classes right now. So I was frustrated with him for a lot of little reasons, and he was feeling bad due to all the stress and then my grumpy mood. So we were a little disconnected. Then I got out to go to the grocery store while he took a nap. As it turns out, I got my hair cut before I went to the store. After getting my hair done, I really missed Joel and wanted to be with him. He agreed to come to the store with me, because he had missed me a lot too while I was gone. Usually the first thing I do when he comes home from classes is greet him excitedly. We just miss each other a lot after being apart. It has definitely kept us together through many times. How can you stay mad at someone who makes you smile no matter how you are feeling?

Reflecting on the Wedding

Joel & I were having a “heated discussion” the other day while going for a walk. As we were talking, Joel asked me if I still liked him. I said that I always like him. When we were dating and having heated arguments I would wonder if I should like him, I would wonder if this would work out or if we will ever resolve our differences. But I told him that now, I never doubt us. I might get frustrated about something, but I have never regretted or worried about our commitment to each other. I also added that after such a wonderful wedding like we had, there is no way we could separate. It would just make life make no sense at all. It got us thinking about how special the wedding was to us. The wedding truly felt tremendous, it didn’t just feel like another day or like a performance. There was so much that happened. I felt so connected to my family, a new connection to his family and a significant connection to Joel. It was wonderful because so many people had helped out and participated and so many things came together so wonderfully that we could feel there was a higher presence involved in unifying us. After saying that, I felt so much better, and our “heated discussion” couldn’t continue. We both noticed that the mood had changed, and we just loved each other.

Rereading what I just wrote reminded me of when my sister, Lindsay, made a comment when we were younger that my writing was too happy and boring! I was offended of course, but it is true. When I am happy, it is pretty happy. And what I wrote above is true, so I wanted to write it. I recall not believing that the wedding was going to be the most special day of my life. I felt bogged down with all the planning and big production of it all. I was worried about the religious aspects of my family being Baptist and the wedding being in a Catholic church. I was worried about the food and how to get everything all set up, worried that we couldn’t afford most of the wedding. I just felt like it was just some big expensive production that had fallen away from some real true meaning. But all of those thoughts and worries were totally gone the day of the wedding. It was just everything everyone always says that I thought sounded silly but now realize is true. The wedding was incredible and magical, and I did feel amazing, and my family and I all cried so much and felt so strongly for each other and it meant so much to Joel and I to have our sisters and brothers in the wedding, to have so many of mine and Joel’s family attend, and all the generosity of the people who helped us pay for certain things or who worked hard to help us with everything. It was truly amazing. So I am happy to write how wonderful it was and how much it is still happily printed in our memories and that Joel and I do think about the wedding and that the thought of the wedding dispels some heated discussions we have. All the people involved really did work together to make that day special for us, and in that sense they all helped in unifying us because it is such a significant thing to have all these people send us their love and show us God’s love, and witness us joining together.

I am truly thankful for that because I recall reading in a psychology book that was studying divorce that the couples who couldn’t remember anything good about their wedding day were more likely to get divorced than those couples who would think back and recall it with love and deep emotion. It was like the memory of the wedding day helped their marriage last. Of course this is not the case for all. But it makes me so grateful for our wedding because each person who was there and who send us their love contributed in making the wedding such a wonderful event in our minds that it could be part of what keeps us together in the future, especially in today’s world of so many divorces. I don’t even know how to thank everyone for that gift, which is why I have to turn it to God because it is such a great gift that everyone is responsible for letting love work through them, but no one person is responsible for the wonderful whole that came of it.