IF YOU WOULD HAVE
TOLD ME THIS IS WHAT I SIGNED UP FOR I WOULDN’T HAVE GOTTEN MARRIED
Seriously, I wouldn’t have.
Don’t misunderstand. I don’t mean
this in a negative way. I’m just saying
if you would have told the plucky mancub standing at the altar smiling, beard
blowing in the wind, what the first year
plus of marriage would entail, he would have promptly grabbed his ball and went
home. That’s right. He would have tucked his tail between his legs
and made a quick exit.
In the same vein, I love being
married. I love my wife. I love our growing family. In all honesty it’s the best thing that’s
ever happened to me. But, tbh, the
mancub standing at altar had no idea what it was going to be like...and here’s
the shocker...that’s actually a good thing.
The
mystery is much more delicious than knowing.
Having
it all planned out can be advantageous.
Having expectations for how things are going to pan out or are supposed
to be are all well and good, but, and here’s a quick tip for all of you soon to
be hitched or are in that
I-really-wanna-get-married-so-bad-I-can-hardly-stand-it phase: 1. You never know what to expect. 2.
What you think is reasonably foreseeable isn’t going to occur the manner
in which you think it should.
But
that’s ok. Take the plunge. If you’re about to say those vows and tie the
knot, then you’re in this for life. If
you believe in immortality and incorruptibility then that means 100s upon 1000s
of years. Get used to it. There is no turning back. Who you were when you were dating is gone. Who you will be six months from now will be
different than who you are now. The same
goes for your spouse.
That’s
ok.
Enter
day 6 of our union. We are driving from
West Texas to the Hill Country for what is supposed to stop No. 3 of our
honeymoon. It’s raining, I’m driving
fast. The red and blues start flashing.
I’m pulled over. The cop is
threatening me and I’m in the middle of nowhere so of course my idealism kicks
in and I start lecturing the cop on the finer points of constitutional law, the
difference between administrative procedures and laws that apply to living
persons, how since he couldn’t prove that the STRAWMAN, MATTHEW MONK wasn’t the
same as the living man Matthew Monk, then he had no jurisdiction in the matter
and had to let me go and if he didn’t he would be violating several of my
inalienable rights and thus subject to penalties…well…he pulled me out of the
car, beat me up and took me to jail.
There I was, sitting in a cell while my wife dealt with the cops by
herself…and I thought I was being a hero and protecting her. Then she had to shell out all of our wedding
money to post bail. Moral of the
story: I was still thinking like a
bachelor idealist. Getting arrested didn’t
bother me…but now I had someone else to think about. I spent the next year paying fines, going to
anger management classes and trying to find steady work with a resisting arrest (Class B Misdemeanor)
charge on my record. Let’s just say this
is not the best foot to start your marriage on.
I’m lucky. My wife is a
trooper. She handled it all
gracefully even though she should have
let me have it. She should have walked out the door. Honestly I almost expected her to. But she didn't.
A little more than
a month later I got one of those phone calls no one ever expects to get. I had finally landed a reasonably steady
job. Stef had booked a long term gig at
her job too, so things were stabilizing and we were getting things sorted out
after the arrest. I woke up that morning
and had a call from my friend that was made about 3 A.M. He left a message and said I needed to call
him back ASAP, and I quote, “It’s that bad.”
I called back. He was
asleep. It was a few hours later, at
church, I was in the middle of getting blasted by El Shaddai at church when
my phone rang. I stepped outside. My friend said some words that didn’t make
any sense. Then I saw the new
article. It still didn’t make
sense. But there it was in black and
white. One of my best friends was in the
middle of it all…something so twisted and bizarre that it belonged in a Stephen
King novel. Then the phone calls
came. Hundreds of them. People asking me questions about my friend. Questions I couldn’t answer. Questions I didn’t know how to answer. Investigators.
Reporters. Accusations. Assumptions.
Presumptions. Emotions that there
aren’t words for and words there aren’t emotions for. My wife stood with me through it all. She gave me all the space I needed to
process. And let me talk her ear off to
process when I knew she was tired of hearing about it all. She was there to comfort me through all of it
even when I thought there was no coming back from it.
We weathered that
storm. The truth came to light. Things settled. Then someone got murdered a few yards from
our front door. All of the sudden our
cute little ethnic neighborhood is being patrolled left and right for cops on
high alert for gang-activity and narcotraffickers. Protecting my wife took on a new light. What was I thinking moving into this
neighborhood in the first place? It was
cheap. Close to my wife’s job and in a
nice central location. (She worked on
the northside while I worked on the southside.)
Suddenly none of that was good enough.
Suddenly we needed more money and a better place to live. Maybe the mancub was learning.
We had a plan, we had
an exit strategy. Then I got laid
off. No warning. A measly $200 as severance. Now we have not enough for rent and we have
to vacate. Luckily we have a place to
go. It was tough. We didn’t know where the $ was going to come
from. But everything got taken care
of. We got settled in. Some new work started. Then the best news we’d ever received happened!...Stef
was pregnant!
And the day after
that I got laid off again and told to vacate the premises within a week. I filed for unemployment. Our great State Programs awarded my a grand total of $0 in unemployment benefits because I'm too old/too young caucasian and male.
Some friends took
us in. I started job hunting. Things were looking up. I had some leads and some interviews. $ materialized out of nowhere. Then one day, in the middle of the afternoon,
Stef started bleeding, bleeding a lot. We
go to the ER. They tell us she’s losing
the baby. Worst day of my life so far.
We don’t lose the
baby. Miracle time! I start a new job. I get a promotion. I get another promotion. I get promotion number three and a company
car. We have enough money to get back
into our own place. We move.
Day one in our new
place, Stef is cooking dinner and I thought she peed her pants, but the water
keeps coming. This isn’t normal. This isn’t supposed to happen. She’s only 20weeks. We were preparing for this only…5 months down
the road. We go to the ER. They tell us there’s nothing they can
do. At this point it’s a coin toss. Worst day of my life. Period.
I start a new
job. We’ve made it to 23 weeks. They said if we made it this far, then our
little girl has the best chance of making it. I know she’s going to. It’s
the strangest thing. I know my daughter
already. Tough like her mom. Stubborn like her dad.
The mancub that
stood at the altar over a year ago is not the person I see in the mirror right
now. And that’s ok. Like I said, if I would’ve told him what was
going to happen, he would’ve ran away scared.
But I’ve made it. It hasn’t been
easy, yet it has been easy. The peace which has followed our little family in the midst of less
than ideal circumstances is nothing short of supernatural. Surely the Lord prepares for us a feast in
the midst of our enemies. The war is
over.
When you stand upon that altar and present yourselves as living sacrifices to God and to one another, there really is no turning back. You have entered the threshold to a brand new reality, a new world entirely. And that’s ok.
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