when this is the seventh month of gratitude

I promised a long while ago that I would keep up this accounting of gratitude for marriage, for the spin of our ordinary days, for the way you learn to move, two by two, day by day, in the quiet and the loud and the in between. I promised myself, maybe in some way I promised this blog, this space I keep carving in, bit by bit, marking where I am and where God is.We've been married almost eight months.When I say that it sounds long and short. It sounds like newlyweds and it feels like we've been married forever, we've always been here, always been rounding another bend of time. I forget to be faithful with the laundry. I get mad at myself which makes me avoid it even more, til there are two laundry baskets and a hamper full of things quietly asking for my attention, for my simple act of caring for the space we share and the work we take on, two by two. And it's so gentle, this forgetfulness, that it makes me so angry I'll pick a fight over something completely unrelated because I have this idea of what kind of person I should be in a marriage, what kind of house I should keep, what kinds of things I should do and say and feel and think...I get mad about the laundry. That's the truth in this seventh month, and the gratitude is as simple as that: he waits for me.He waits for me through the rage portion, the avoiding eye contact and getting eerily quiet portion. He waits for me to lose my temper and then go silently inside myself to find it again. He waits even when his hands are full of dishes. When we have only 10 minutes to get somewhere and we are already behind. He waits.And in waiting, he keeps his heart open to me. He waits for me to find the words, to find the thread, to walk my way back from the edge of cliff or from the confusion or the silence.Marriage is the fullest kind of mirror. It shows the ways that you're loved right in the midst of showing you all the things you really do and say and think. It reveals and it redeems. Marriage calls you out of your secret, silent heart and into that hallowed space where your belonging sings in your bones. In this, the seventh month, where I know I've gotten mad about laundry or sad about not going on a walk every day or worried about absolutely everything for no good reason... in this seventh month I can list for you all of those things, but what I know most deeply is just this:The love of my life will stay at the sink with the dishes undone or sit in the car when we're already late or hold me in our living room with all that unfolded laundry, and all the while, he is teaching me that love is patient.I'm grateful for this: that the love of my life waits for me, especially now that we're always around each other, always nearby, always close. He still waits. And that waiting is a great gift.Love,hilary