maybe I could dance with you….

Sooo, this post is not about marriage.  My marriage or anyone else’s really.

It is about promises.  And a song I really like.

I really like this song. It’s not really my type of music, kinda sappy, kinda slow, I am more of a Reliant K girl than a Michael Buble or whatever his name is type.

But for obvious reasons, the beginning sounds a lot like my marriage.  I read that Andrew Peterson wrote it in a spare room after a big fight with his wife.  Note to men – writing a beautiful song to your wife that makes it to the radio is an excellent way to apologise.  Just saying.
Either way, I find it touching and it makes me teary. 

My dh, on the other hand, can’t get past the chorus about dancing in minefields.  “This is just a dumb idea” he says.  “Why would you encourage people to do that?”,

Sigh.

The fact that it’s a metaphor (or a simile?  I can’t even spell simile so I will stick with metaphor), or that most people listening to the song have no direct experience with land mines – totally irrelevant to him.  But I digress.

I have had this song on my mind for the past few weeks, mostly because the Christian station here plays a lot of the same music over and over.  But the plus side to Christian radio – no Nickleback.  Just saying, you might want to consider switching.

The more I hear this song, the more I hold onto the idea.

“And it was harder than we dreamed but I believe that’s what the promise is for.”

Marriage is hard.  Add years, babies, life situations… it only gets harder.  For our case, add long separations and plenty of anxiety – it gets worse. Some days we don’t hold on tight because we are desperately and hopelessly in love with each other.  We hold on tight because we made a promise.  And that promise is what gets us back to the part where we remember we are desperately and hopelessly in love with each other.

Does anyone remember Dharma and Greg?

I could spend hours on YouTube trying to find the right episode, but on one, Darma and her parents are discussing the fact that they never got married.  Her dad says that was because there was no lasting promise to their relationship.  The made a choice to be together, each day, for one day. The next day was a new choice.  They thought that was more romantic.

Dharma’s answer:  because they were unwilling to tell her they loved each other forever, she spent her childhood wondering when the day would come that her parents would chose not to be together.

I don’t know why I’ve always remembered that moment on that show, it wasn’t a favorite show or even one I saw a lot.  Maybe it was because it seemed a very conservative view to present on a liberal show.  Maybe it was because all of a sudden, the reason for a ‘promise’ made sense.

Now that I’ve looked it up I can’t stop watching episodes online though.  It was pretty darn hilarious.  But again, off topic…..

Relationships are hard.  TV and movies might make it seem that they are easy, but that’s because you rarely see the ‘happily ever after’.  Movies end when they fall in love.  And we are left thinking that intense romance will last throughout the relationship and if it doesn’t, it must not be love any more.  But if that were the case, if we stayed that infatuated with our lovers every day of the rest of our lives, well, for one, nothing would get done.  For those of you in a relationship, do you remember that stage?  The constant need to see each other, be together.  The intensity of every feeling and emotion?  All we’d do is sit around and stare in each others eyes and make stupid expensive decisions just to prove our love.

Nope, life goes on and that feeling of love while it certainly returns now and again, is replaced by love.  Not infatuation.  Not obsession.  Love.  Love is beautiful and amazing and wonderful to be in the middle of.  And love is hard.  Love argues.  Love hurts each other.  Love leaves the lights on and the toilet seat up and moves your laundry out of the way to throw his combats in without telling you.

And that is where the promise comes in. 

Today a Pastor I follow on facebook had some hard statistics about the adultery and divorce rate of military couples.  Followed by the hundreds of expected comments by well meaning people, most of whom blasted the culture of the forces and the military lifestyle as the reason for such high rates of infidelity.

You know that saying that “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people”?  Well, we all really know it’s a combination of both, right?
How about this: “the Army doesn’t end marriages, people end marriages”.  A 7-9 month deployment and a stressed out wife with 3 kids… that’s the kind of ‘minefield’ the song refers to.  And that’s not the only kind of ‘minefield’ a marriage can experience.  So’s infertility.  Or an unplanned pregnancy.  Or financial strain.  Or a job loss.  All the way to harder heart issues like the loss of a child or a devastating injury.  They are all minefields, hard painful places that make everything in your life, including your relationship, harder.

I had a wife once tell me that she couldn’t deal if the army let her man go through decompression in Cyprus because ‘of course he’s going to get drunk and probably have an affair’.  He might.  That’s a choice.  My dh has done decompression in exotic locations a few times.  Not once has that happened.  That’s a choice.  My trusting him, that’s my choice too.  So’s my choice to be faithful in all ways whether he is home or not.

His first deployment he’d only been off the ground a day when I got an anonymous middle of the night prank call asking when my tide box would go in the window.  I had no idea what that meant until my neighbor told me.  If you don’t know what it means, don’t even bother finding out.  It’s sad.  But it’s one of the choices out there.

In my marriage, cutting and running is not a choice.  My parents have a strict ‘no returns’ policy.  So did my Bamma, which works out well for my dad since my mom couldnt send him back.  I believe with all my heart some choices are for life.

Marriage is about choices.  It’s about temptations, it’s about challenges, it’s about our own minefields.  . 


But it’s about promises, too.

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