A Bit About Certainty
A Bit About Certainty
What I’ve learned about myself after five years of marriage
by Taylor May
Five years of marriage has always felt like the big one. Like the first big one, I guess. When I thought about it in the past, I’d dream that we'd no longer be newlyweds, we'd be established in whatever path we'd chosen maybe with a baby or two to show for the years we'd trudged through. As the fifth year creeps up and is no longer just a possibility, I find myself wondering at the woman I was when I met my husband, and the woman I am now. They say a lot can change in a year. Through five of them, we've seen as much. How? In nearly the same amount of time I finished college, I've been through phases that feel like lifetimes ago.
My husband has always intrigued me. Even before we were dating, I could listen to him forever and often would. Memories of high school are littered with late nights in the orange groves, atop his innocently quirky minivan, staring out over the rows of trees. I inhaled sweet orange blossoms and youthful serenity and exhaled a peace I only knew there with him. I never said very much, just sat silently listening to all of his words about all of his ideas about all of everything. High school infected me with a bone-deep desire to be approved of. And there, with him, his wild words and ideas I didn’t have to try so hard. I didn’t have to be, I just had to listen to who he was … of which he was entirely certain. Maybe that’s what always intrigued me about him then, what I love about him now: that rock-solid, unshakeable certainty.
He's got this resilient strength that doesn't quit, no matter the integrity of the ground he's standing on. He'll fight till he sinks. The opposite of me who bends all too easily and whenever possible, for the sake of peace. At times, I threaten to break beneath the weight of everyone else's version of right. This is my normal. So much so that I'm not always certain of my own ideas of right and wrong. Truth as relativity is a truth I'd like to know if I'm honest. That way I'd never have to argue, never have to be sure.
When we started dating his confidence moved from intriguing to threatening. In closer quarters than we were as friends, his personality pushed the boundaries of my quietness, my timid tendency to hide away behind the voices of those around me. He begged for my view, pleaded for my conversation, no longer content with a quiet listener perched on the top of a minivan but desiring a companion, a teammate to run the race beside him. My people-pleasing, no-opinion-having self wasn't safe with him. His tendency to certainty challenged me in a new and terrifying way.
I was lost for a while in his shadow, I think … uncertain of who I was. The foundations of everything I thought I’d known about myself were proving unstable, fit to collapse with the slightest stroke. But God is in the business of making beauty from the things that crumble. I had been crumbling for so long … and trying over and over again to put pieces back that were never meant to be together. I look back on pictures and see myself desperately attempting to graft myself into who he was, which was never the plan. I wore my hair differently, dressed differently, talked about different things. It was like I was taken to the base of myself, a blank space for God to rebuild and renew.
Since those early, wobbly-legged days I’ve grown firmer, steadier. And though I teeter between heels and barefoot toes, I can stare down the storm and stay put, planted in the truth I’ve come to know. Some things matter to me now that I've realized mattered all along: like warms cups of coffee, eye contact and one-on-one conversation, ocean edges and soaking up moments with quiet and words. These things don’t matter so much to him. And that’s ok. Other things I picked up along the way, over these five years are things I’d never thought would matter to me: simple and minimal living, the marvelous outdoors and climbing mountains, adventuring into unknown territory for the sake of peace, in the name of love.
We haven’t, by any means, made it to the end of this road of sharpening. It’s a marathon that will end in coming home. And we’ll have been through many more seasons and done much more sharpening by then. But throughout the meager amount of seasons our (still) young marriage has endured, I’ve learned a bit about certainty from my all too certain husband. I’ve learned that I’m certainly not him, that I’m not always all too certain of who I am, but that I’m entirely certain who God is and how he sees me.
But throughout the meager amount of seasons our (still) young marriage has endured, I’ve learned a bit about certainty from my all too certain husband. I’ve learned that I’m certainly not him, that I’m not always all too certain of who I am, but that I’m entirely certain who God is and how he sees me.
After five years I am beginning to see that The Lord has used my husband, who is so very different than I am, to show me who I truly am, who He is continually making me. That's the best part about being married, seeing all the potential ... the clarity beneath the murk. He could see my confidence, my strength beneath my cowering. He could see the purity of my heart behind my endless pursuit for approval. He could see the joy laden with layers the years had piled on. With every year we endure, the past peels back and we become who we were meant to be all along.