We understand that “faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” Allow me to equate this to the saying, “love is blind”.
That significant other is going somewhere and with trust, you unrelentingly walk along beside him, believing in whatever lies ahead. Even if anything were to go wrong, there is not a worry in your mind. You have each other and that’s all that matters. Believe it or not, I still feel this way about my husband even after going on three decades of walking beside him. Every moment? Every step of the way? No.
When you’ve invested in a relationship for quite some time, such testimony of faith and fighting the good fight gets utterly real. We’re anticipating to hold on. And, we do. Up until trials and tribulations start to test the waters, we strongly do. Like a pandemic, however, though always strong in victory, sometimes, there is just nothing you can do to prepare ahead for every battle waiting or comes surprisingly at you with only hope to take you down.
When the going gets tough and you move forward to see that what awaits is looking even more rough, better days to follow can feel unpromising. All of a sudden, proof of what is promised or hoped for seems now, unreal, questioning and sometimes, arguing, before even moving another step forward.
Instead of just believing, in time, the best is yet to arrive or that it may actually already be before us, we demand absolute certainty. The “honeymoon period” has definitely come to an end. Take a moment to think there for a second, though. Why does this happen where our minds shift from, “I love you so much!” to the infamous Janet Jackson line, “What have you done for me lately?”
Did we not make a bed of roses even when there were no actual roses to be found in the beginning?
My husband and I started parenting off young. We enjoyed every moment together so much that discouraging us to see one another only fortified our young love for one another even more. It is okay for several out there to have assumed we would end up being part of the fifty percent statistic to not make it in marriage. Many of those are on their second or third marriages so it would only make sense to anticipate or sadly, hope the same for us. However, I’d like to think both of us had a sense of what we were looking for in a partner for life.
I knew right away the man I chose to devote myself to and have children with was one who not only had a strong stance of who he was, but just as equally, where he was going. It is quite different from a man, when given the means to get going with life, sits back and decides to not take the offer right away or perhaps never. This type gave me uneasiness. Perhaps because all my life, I had witnessed immobility or surrender. I chose my husband because I saw neither a stop or surrender.
I could have a husband who would allow me to be whatever I pleased to be from the moment I awoke to the time I lay my head down to sleep each night. This is what I hear my own thoughts thinking like a five years-old having a tantrum whenever my husband tells me, sends me, or even writes me, another reminder of our “to dos” in life. Life would be so easy without someone telling you what to always do with it, right?
I actually had an opportunity to have that “easy” life and I thankfully, with absolutely no regret even to this day, left that chance. Somehow, I knew early on that while I may have been a flower blooming so brightly before someone’s eyes to gaze upon each day, I could not see myself not being anticipated to prosper, propagate, or anticipate inevitable change. While I had to take my own cup of self love and care to my own account, I also needed to make sure to be around someone to hold me accountable.
My husband’s determination to begin a legacy for our family and our generations to follow came from an inner drive I began to see become more evident the more children we had and the older each one got. Having come from familial hardships myself, the passenger seat wasn’t too difficult to take. Never wanting our children to experience what we each had no choice to but fought through to overcome as children, my husband and I had a common goal- not just survive, but thrive.
I was good being a passenger because I believed in the destination my husband envisioned for the family. Soon to discover, no road is perfectly smooth and not every road permitted the same speed limit. All of a sudden, there were times where I started to wonder about not just how fast we were going, but the roads taken.
It’s difficult to be on the passenger side and not want to stop and smell the flowers at times. A rebel and free spirit to add, I always had a thing or two to say as time progressed and we were still driving forward. It wasn’t that I was being a little kid in the movie, “Are We There Yet?” by Ice Cube, asking that very question over and over again. I believed in my husband’s plans and aspirations for our family. I still do.
When you’ve arrived at already several destinations and still, the one behind the wheel wants to keep going, it’s difficult to not be the negative vibe. Even passengers get tired of being, well, a passenger. The music being played gets old and soon, you begin to think you could have handled being behind the wheel better than the one driving. There were exits passed or sceneries never stopped at that makes it difficult for the heart, mind, and spirit to not want to question.
When the one behind the wheel has this drive to get going right away and keep going as if no time is there to waste, the inner fight inside oozes out. My husband wholeheartedly expressed his relentless hunger not for just betterment, but superior excellence, more than I realized I had prepared myself to take part in. While a passenger, it wasn’t as if I didn’t acquire my own license to drive. This very well gave me some merit to be that “back seat driver” at times. Trying to ignore me or argue with me brought out the Hulk, suppressing the peaceful and kind, Bruce Banner, who usually followed the plan with no objection. Bruce never spoke up. Hulk couldn’t wait to. Dear husband soon learned both came as one.
As he was finishing his Computer Science degree, I was breaking into getting my Psychology and Teacher’s Certificate. Yes. My husband definitely set us off on the right foot. Before you knew it, our living headquarters went from an apartment close to his college to then an apartment close to mine, to a rental home close to his work and where I could finish my teacher’s certification to then, our first home to call our own after several years of getting a feel of where best to provide our children’s childhood upbringing within a diverse community. Although over five years in gap, it seemed now like a blink before we found ourselves from buying our first home to our second home. I had thought at that point, we were well settled in. Little did I know that we had just truly started our growth.
Although having a degree, I stayed home to focus on our children. My husband was hardly absent as the captain of the ship nonetheless. In fact, quite contrarily, he was always present. I’ll never forget the first time my husband came ringing the doorbell at our first home (he has his keys, but he always does this when he is excited about something- the same way he excitedly knocked at our rental home the time he learned he was having a girl for our second pregnancy). He was pacing back and forth at our front doorstep, telling me how fun it was going to be. You see, he had signed up our first son, just at the brink of age 5, at that time, for basketball at the YMCA and to add, he happily volunteered as the coach. I did not come from a background of understanding that children so young could start playing sports nor did I know of any father signing up to volunteer as a coach. Evidently, though not having had the same parenting background, my husband had done the research. It was within part of his plan I just hadn’t thought of along with the rest to follow. You’d think I, as the stay-at-home wife and mom could glide through the years with ease. That would be true for someone who’d enjoy not taking part. I’m not that one.
Going back to the driving or captain analogy, I would like to say eight times out of ten I did a pretty darn good job of being that peaceful, loving, fun companion. I listened, laughed, and responded when intuitively prompted to a fine cup of tea. I even brought the treats and cookies along the way. Then, there were those two out of ten times where I promise you that still to this day, my own actions and words scare me. For those who have ever said or done the wrong to take a course from smooth to extremely hazardous, within that circle, I join you.
Was it what he said? Was it what the kids said? Was it what no one said? Was it what wasn’t said? Was it them? Or, was it me? What was it?
We have yet to finish helping our two youngest of five navigate through life until adulthood. I am thankful that I see myself at a one time out of ten with those passenger side “back seat driver” moments. Our youngest two have yet to arrive to the last mile, those last painstaking years of adolescence, but looking at the continued success of our older three, I’m okay with the anticipation of two out of ten moments again through this next upcoming navigation course for our final two.
Why do I still believe in the promises of my husband for our future together? Because I’m not about to be the one who, when looking back, will be the one to blame for never arriving to a promised destination.
My husband, to this day, still high-fives me even when just talking about what is to come in the near future. While we used to talk over our near and sought-out future plans, written or computerized in the past and now, on a whiteboard in his office, at high speed or slow pace, what hasn’t changed is his drive to keep moving forward. Do I dare give him doubt that what he envisions will never be?
I may question. I may debate. I may argue. I may even at times, sound resentful. But even to his frustration of me stopping amidst everything going on so I may speak my mind, no doubt have I made it clear with him throughout the years, I have always believed in him. I am not just a passenger in this relationship, after all. I am his wife, the mother to his children, his chosen partner for life. Such entitlements, thus, anticipate at times a call to pause.
I am thankful. My husband to this day gives me that look as if I’m still that flower blooming before him. Trust me, there have been times whenever he doesn’t dare look at me, where I already know that a blooming flower is the last thing he equates to his thoughts of me. Responsibly, I know that he looks at me continuously to think, has she prospered, propagated, or changed to the very best? After all, as I look unto him, only to my best will I be able to help him rise to his.
I’d like to suggest that in the saying, “Love is blind”, there is an understanding of acceptance to be innocent, not stupid.
When I specifically purchased a jade plant last year for a room in my house, my only expectation for it was to grow happily in this typical-sized pot I had known for such to grow in.
I recently visited and toured an island. These one plants caught my attention by the side of the roads near the coastlines. Each looked so familiar to me, but at first glance, I was unable to make a connection. My mind silently had an explosion just as soon as it had hit me as to what type of plant it was- my same jade plant?!! The size? I’ll be darn! They were growing like hedges! On the sides of the streets were bushes of them, growing freely and abundantly as if without boundaries!
At the soonest opportunity I had following our arrival back home, I shopped around for not just a flower pot my jade plant was presently growing in, but this time, a tall and wide planter. Just as soon as I lifted my plant to its transfer, I kid you not that I felt it breathe, as if to say to me, “Thank you!”
That jade plant hasn’t even been in its new corner in its bigger container for a month and it has already grown both in height and diameter.
I know our significant other can get on our, dare I say it, nerves, sometime (touché to the opposition who would throw that right back at me with my husband in the frontlines), but partnership is truly about not just being who you are today, but helping each other grow to become your greatest potential, believing that there is so much more of you.
There is so much agony to having to hear what more you can do to improve, arguing that zeitgeist saying even I have written an article about, “You Are Enough”. And yet, I am guilty for telling my husband like it is when it’s my turn to give him a piece of my (mind) affectionate words of advice or loving opinion. Yes. Some plants can grow wildly by a coastline. But when climates, temperatures, watering, soil, spacing, and the amount of sunshine must be under your control, letting something be is hardly an option. Love, faith, and partnership require work.
While taking them to boxing practice one day, our youngest child blurted out that my husband mentioned to him and his brother that he was feeling taken for granted. I’m sure I wasn’t supposed to hear this as a I saw the discomfort and eery silence from my husband upon our son innocently sharing this with me. I heard my husband mutter an explanation to the now revealed claim, but my heart was too stricken. My husband’s eyes and his gestures had me watching him in silence.
This strong, loving, caring, driven, determined, tireless, family of a man before me, had opened up to our youngest children what I must have pretended to not know. Here was this man who always seemed to just go about his plans, sometimes taking only moments to remind me and our growing children what each of our part was in the whole scheme of the full vision that, for some time as the driver and captain, he had his own feelings amongst us all.
It didn’t matter that I couldn’t stand to hear him tell me one more thing to remember to do that day. It didn’t matter that he sent me yet another message to read to help improve our life together. It didn’t matter that he sent me reminders of what to still check off. It didn’t matter that we had our weekly meeting to once again, check where we were with our ongoing goals and near future plans. Okay. Yes. I’ll be slightly agitated at times again. However, that day, I was reminded of who I had married, one who from the beginning, just like me, blinded with love, committed to endure.
Having seen the look on my husband’s face and hearing him mumble some kind of explanation following what our son had shared, I hurt to know that he, as the father and husband of this household, was feeling let down.
What would happen if the driver or captain were to actually stop?
Thirty years into this teamwork with my husband and still, we don’t have love, faith, and partnership down to perfection. My husband can be the most challenging to be in partner with in a marriage. And yet, having said that, I hear voices telling me, “That’s because you’ve never met mine!” I laugh right there and will leave that alone for comedy stand up lines.
Why do I still believe in what lies ahead, together as one? Because that other one that stands beside me is counting on me to believe. If a jade plant can grow into a hedge, our growing possibilities have just begun.
