Turning Toward Spouse and Family: A Personal Story - Wk #7

My great-great grandfather was born and raised in Denmark.

He was married and had eight children with his wife.

My great-great grandfather decided that his marriage and kids were not right for him and he and his maid ran away together to America.

These two had another seven children of their own. Though, their marriage was never verifiable and always supposed as never happening.

My great grandmother was one of those seven children. She was a coarse woman, and will never be remembered as a kind woman. She then had her own children out of wedlock. And thus we come to my grandmother.

My grandma lived a difficult life. With little to no love from her parents, and no religious support of any kind, my grandma lived a wild life. She got pregnant from her boyfriend and then decided to marry him on a whim. Meanwhile they had another baby - my mom.

My grandma couldn't stand my grandpa and divorced him when my mom was only two years old. My grandma continued to have a string of boyfriends over many years. And divorced for a second time as well.

Now we get to my mom. A wonderful woman with a very difficult child and teenage-hood. My mom had very little ideas to what a healthy marriage and family ought to look like. My mom married my dad who had already been married twice before and who was almost ten years her senior!

Now that I have set the stage, my parents marriage looks like a bad and risky move.

With generations of broken marriages and unstable families, my parents marriage looks as if it is doomed for failure. The odds seem so against them.

My parents, with eight children of their own, have been married almost 33 years. And I have often wondered at what has kept them together.

As I have pondered the reasons why they have stayed together, I have realized that it is because they have chosen to be selfless. It because they have chosen to focus on their family and the other person first before themselves.

My parents have chosen to love. Not waited for love to act upon them. Not waited to fall out, but to choose to stay in and committed to one another.

My parents religious commitments have bound them together and with their families. My mom has always told me she would've chosen the selfish path out a long time ago, if it weren't for these religious commitments she has made to her my dad.

There's a lot of my ancestral history that I cannot be proud of. There were lot of mistakes made for many generations. But my parents broke the cycle. They chose to turn towards each other instead away from each like so many generations before them did. And I cannot be grateful enough for those choices they have made and those commitments they keep to one another and to God.

Has my parents marriage been easy? A walk in the park? Have they never fought? Never thought about divorce? Never bad mouthed the other? No. My parents marriage has been a very difficult one. When I picture a model marriage I have never thought about theirs... until now.

Because model marriages don't come by chance. They take incredible fortitude and hard work. Model marriages aren't always happy, and spouses aren't always turning toward each other. But that's the point, the model marriages are the ones that work. Where they keep putting in the best efforts and keep failing and keep trying, until forever. Model marriages stick it out through the storms instead of tumbleweed-ing away.

I love my parents. I am grateful that they broke so many poor cycles of marriage and family life. I am grateful to continue something they started and to choose spouse and family and religious convictions over all else.