Tonight, like every other night for the past week or so, we dished up our dinner, sat down at the table and made polite conversation. Then I loaded the dishwasher and my husband put away his washed and folded laundry before both sitting down in the lounge to put on some series.

Sounds perfectly pleasant doesn’t it? Not to me, tonight my mind was going a hundred miles an hour.

Why was our conversation over dinner just simple small talk?

Was he getting bored of me?

Am I not intellectually challenging enough?

Were we drifting apart?

Why are we so boring all of a sudden?

Where has our spark gone?

And then…

Is our marriage failing?

Neither of us were doing anything wrong and no one was to blame for the “meh” state of our marriage. Things were just difficult.

We’ve been through a fair amount in our three and a bit years of holy matrimony. Moving across the country, a miscarriage, losing family members, having a baby, maybe it was all catching up to us and this was the beginning of the end.

We are both exhausted. Our daughter has been a bit of a nightmare the past few nights (a good ol’ growth spurt…again!) and Dan has been under an incredible amount of pressure at work which is exhausting in a completely different way. I’m still trying to find my own identity again after becoming a new mom, never mind trying to adapt to motherhood in general (just when you think you’ve mastered it, it throws you a curveball),  and, and, and…

As my thoughts began to snowball, preparing to avalanche I realised: we were going to be okay.

Why you ask?

It’s as simple as this: I knew that things were not peachy.

We both knew it.

And we didn’t like it.

Marriage is hard work. It’s also amazing, wonderful, exciting and the best decision I ever made. But it’s hard work.

Like everything else in life, marriage goes through seasons. We just happen to be going through a very trying season. One where we seem to be tired all the time, putting in effort really takes effort and it seems never ending.

The important thing though is that we realise that this is just a season, not a preview for the rest of our lives.

Aria won’t have a bad week every week, work won’t be as intense every day and when it comes down to it, we are still madly in love with each other and we stand by the vows and sacrament we made 3 years and 2 months ago.

“To have and to hold from this day forward,

for better or worse

for richer or poorer

in sickness and in health

to love and to cherish

till death us do part”

And so tonight when we go to bed, we’ll lie a little closer, we’ll kiss a little longer, and I’ll fall asleep reminding myself that seasons pass and that our marriage is safe  because we treasure it (and each other) too much to let it just slip away.

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