It's Because I'm Literary I Guess...

I've been thinking alot lately about marriage (not getting married, that's in the past, but the state of marriage in general, mine, my friends). It seems that society, the church, our friends and colleagues have all sold us a bill of lies that says marriage is supposed to be happy, easy and blissful. I'm beginning to wonder if Margaret Atwood didn't come closer to the point with her poem "Habitation".

Marriage is not
a house or even a tent

it is before that, and colder:

the edge of the forest, the edge
of the desert
the unpainted stairs
at the back where we squat
outside, eating popcorn

the edge of the receding glacier

where painfully and with wonder
at having survived even
this far

we are learning to make fire.

I wonder if Atwood hits closer to what many of us feel in our marriages. The day-to-day step of it all where we pass on another in the hall and the kitchen, brushing shoulders and asking, "can you please change the baby, wash the dog, take out the trash" and we forget to ask "how was your day?"

For those of you who aren't nerds like I am, Atwood is clear, marriage is a journey. Marriage is more than a house, two kids and a dog. Marriage is learning and growing and experiencing together. It is primitive. The need for companionship and passion is at the crux of our desire for marriage.

When I was in college one of my goals was my MRS degree. I thought if I could just get that then I would have made it. I would be complete. I realize now that nothing changed when I got married. Well, let me be clearer, my name changed; I as a person stayed the same.

Please don't misunderstand me, my marriage is wonderful. I have a handsome, loving, caring man who gets me most of the time. I get frustrated and irritated and angry like we all do. I wake up some mornings wondering if it is really worth all this energy. My marriage is a struggle some days.

That leads me to my next point. Why can't we be honest. Why can't our pastors stand up and say, "have you lost the passion. Is life not what you imagined it was going to be? Here's some help." Why do we have to go to women's banquets and have ladies stand up and rave about how wonderful their husbands are and how they never fight or disagree. Why can't we remove the mask and get real? I wonder.

Paul Laurence Dunbar said it best:

We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eye, -
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
and mouth with myriad subleties.

Why should the world be over-wise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
We wear the mask.

We smile, but O great Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world dream otherwise,
We wear the mask.

Wouldn't it be better if we got honest. If we were real. If the world saw us for what we are growing, struggling, reaching humans?

Just a thought.