hard?

people said it would be hard. this loving another thing. and it is, i suppose. in a way. dying daily to my wants and putting his first. people said this first year would be filled with hurt and strife and angry words and wordless emotions with nowhere to go. people said i'd feel trapped. people said, it would get easier, with time and prayer and learning each other, we'd know better. people said, get through the first year and you get to start at the good stuff. 

but this thing, isn't really all that hard. it's hard work. but when your co-labourer sits next to you. when he emails in the morning to see if your journey was good. when he books an appointment with the sports massage guy because he knows you've been waking up in the night from the pain of a body knitting itself back together. when there's a delightful moment of standing in a hallway, our hallway, laughing and being close, because it's our house and we can. it's not even all that much hard work.

and i'm not all that certain why it's not hard. we've done some pretty hard things in these first six months. we've walked through joblessness and surgery. through money woes and recovery. we've started to establish our family and figure out how to do laundry and dishes and cleaning and work and friends and budgets and parties and bible studies and sharing a bed and sharing a bathroom and who gets the remote and what music to listen to and eating at the table and taking out the rubbish and ironing his shirts and sending the thank you notes and going to church and submitting faithfully day after day to each other, and to christ. that's what these first six months have been about. i wouldn't trade those months of joblessness now, we got en entire extra month of just-the-two-of-us-time. i expect i'll be grey and he'll be grey-er before that happens again.

and yes, all of it can be hard at any given point, but never have i wondered if we were right - i know, deep down that this is what love looks like. the bending down and picking up his discarded socks. the way he readies for work all quiet so that i can sleep longer. the conversations that last way too late into the night.  i know that love is saturday morning rugby for him and girls night for me. and that we do it willingly, even when we don't feel that way, when we release each other, the other wants to come back. 

this hard work, it's worth it. all of it. even the laundry. it is the good stuff.