Hopeful Married Saints: Our First Anniversary!
Anniversary: January 2, 2021
Happy New Year, everyone!
I know the Married Saints blog is supposed to be dedicated to those canonized (or on the way!) holy men and women who are either married or patron saints of marriage, but today I want to change it up because… today is my first wedding anniversary!
My husband and I are not saints. God willing, we still have many decades left to foster our relationship with God, to leave a good impact on the world, to keep striving for holiness… to mess up, to get knocked down, to go into the confessional and promise to be better. We know our path won’t be a straight line but we hope and pray that we will fight the good fight, run the race, and keep the faith (2 Timothy 4:7).
Today I want to take a look back on what our first year of marriage has been like. If you read my Satan Hates Marriage blog, you know some of this already. Throughout the year, a lot of people have asked us what it has how it’s been, and we’ve always looked at each other and said, “It’s been a really difficult year.” The priest who married us, without skipping a beat, said he hears that a lot — newlyweds get on each others nerves in ways they never expected. They find it difficult to live together and constantly having to consider to the needs and desires of another isn’t what they imagined it to be. I read a reflection from a fellow newlywed a few weeks ago where he described a similar sentiment; he loves his bride but wow, marriage is a lot and he didn’t expect it to put such a strain on their relationship.
So we’ve had to clarify — actually, we love being married! Specifically, we love being married to each other. Truly, any “burdens” we’ve encountered have been silly things that we just need to tweak.
What’s made this year so difficult for us was everything that seemed to be happening to us.
The very morning after we got home from our honeymoon, our truck lost traction with the road and my husband went into a ditch. The truck was totaled. An ER trip and CT scan later, we were praising God that we were only facing a mild concussion.
In the following days, we encountered a health struggle that I couldn’t have ever expected. It’s something that still impacts our marriage today. We’ve both thanked each other over and over for sticking through it — most husbands wouldn’t be patient enough to work through the consequences of this diagnoses, and (he said) most wives wouldn’t try as hard to work through it as I did. Until just last month, it required physical therapy every other week (in addition to the bi-weekly physical therapy I was already doing for my chronic health).
On the heels of this diagnosis, I lost my main source of income due to downsizing. The pandemic made it seem impossible for me to find a replacement that was such a perfect fit as this job. We suddenly became a nearly single-income household.
All while this was happening, our parents were brewing their own health struggles. Three of our four parents would end up in the ER (some multiple times). I still haven’t been able to see my parents and celebrate Christmas with them.
In the fall, I had two breast biopsies done. It was a scary experience and I feel lucky that everything came back benign.
The most trying part of 2021 was when my husband got severe COVID after we went on what was supposed to be a wonderful trip to Philadelphia. We made music and fostered new relationships for the Feast of the Assumption. And by “severe COVID” I mean that my husband was hospitalized for 2 weeks with extensive pneumonia in both of his lungs. His oxygen levels kept plummeting despite continually increasing levels of oxygen being pushed into his system. He maxed out the highest capacity machine they had before the ventilator and we feared the worst. I was snuck in by staff on two occasions (we celebrated his birthday in the COVID ward), and the second time I didn’t know if I would ever see him in person again.
And if all of that wasn’t enough, our beloved dog has been fighting a mystery illness for several months now. We have lots of data but no true diagnosis or path to recovery. It has been a daily struggle as overflowing veterinary offices push appointments out by literal months. I’ve had her since before I met my husband — it was just the two of us in a brand new city — but I haven’t had nearly enough time with her.
Last year didn’t stop for us. Our first year of marriage was really horrible, and we are hoping (and praying so hard) that the second is better.
I’m sharing all of this, not because I think we have it all figured out (only one year down; we still have forever to go), but because I think it’s important for us to share our struggles with each other. We can control how we let external factors impact our relationships. It’s the way we navigate these struggles that sanctify. Once you’re married, your spouse is not “other” — your spouse and you are one, and you need to face problems like you are on the same side (because you are!).
We could have let any number of these issues get in between us. We could have let the stress of everything get the better of us and slowly chip away at our relationship. Satan would have loved that. Instead, we held onto each other and showed that we will not give up. We love each other. Our marriage is our top priority.
Someday, I hope we get to share a feast day.
