I love the process of an idea becoming a building.
I love that one day someone decided she wanted to build a library. I love that she told an architect about her dream and he designed a building. Then an architect showed a contractor the plans. A contractor rounded up the tools and people necessary to begin building the library. In a matter of time a library exists. Her dream is reality.
It’s amazing to see a dream go from nothing to something.
You have a dream for your marriage. You want it to be adventurous. Or you want it to be stable. Or you want it to be romantic Or you want it to be a place to rest. You want something. Dream.
You know what it takes to get there. Or what needs to be avoided to get there. Marriages that feel like sanctuaries require honesty. We can’t rest if we can’t trust. Plan.
Construction sites don’t take days off. Every day a little more work is done. A little more foundation. A little more drywall. A little more paint. Until whatever you’re building is done. Till your building is done, though, it’s a little work everyday. Same with marriage. Say something nice every day. Let your partner know one thing you want from him or her every day. Build.
Every marriage is building something. What are you building?
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We’re building a slow burning marriage. We want to be like the embers of a campfire. Insanely hot and unexpected. Not just big flames and lots of smoke. We don’t need big flashy love to be happy – we just need the quiet and insulation to keep going.
My wife and I were married almost 22 years. She passed away in January, 2002 as a result of breast cancer. So I will need to comment on the kind of marriage we built.
On our tenth anniversary we went out for a very romantic dinner. As we were reminiscing about our wedding day, I asked her why she decided to marry me. Without hesitation she said, “Because you were reliable”. I thought, “Oh great, she thinks of me like a Toyota – they’re reliable.” Then she added, “and I always knew I could count on you”. And I knew I could count on her as well because that was the reason I asked her to marry me. So that commitment to each other was the foundation of our marriage.
At her funeral mass, one of the people who spoke was our close friend Rabbi Stacy. At the end of her eulogy, she said, “Those of you who know John well know that most of his sentences start with three important words – ‘Here’s the deal’. John’s deal with Maureen was that he was going to walk with her, through thick and through thin, in health and in sickness, in this world and the world to come. Eternal means eternal. After all, as John would say, a deal is a deal.”
Maureen and I did have a deal and she would have done the same for me.