marriage – sethlewis.ie

Learning by Experience

The moment I met our first child, everything changed. It happened as quickly as a heart can beat, with a force that took my breath away—my eyes and my heart were suddenly opened to understand love in an entirely new way. I had heard about the love of parents for their children. I had experienced it from the other end, as the child of truly wonderful parents. But none of this prepared me for how it feels when your hearts bursts with absolute, unconditional, unfathomable love for a human you don’t even know, who can’t respond, and whose needs never seem to end—and none of that matters at all.

The Never-Ending Novelty Of Staying With The Same Person

Love songs will never go out of fashion. But have you noticed that most love songs are limited to the very first stages of love? They’re almost always about two specific topics: either the excitement of meeting someone new, or the sadness of breaking up. It’s rare to hear love songs that focus on love in the decades after the “I do’s”. They’re out there, certainly, but they don’t make the top twenty lists.

It makes sense—by sheer numbers, there are a lot more relationships that start and end than relationships that go the distance. Perhaps the excitement of meeting someone new seems more interesting than the settled daily living of established relationships. There’s an appearance of novelty to it, except that when every song on the radio is about the same kind of novelty it doesn’t quite feel as novel anymore, does it?

Threads (a poem)

It was the middle of September when Jessica and I went on our first date, while we were in university. That was twenty-three years ago, and ever since our lives have been woven together in too many ways to count. That’s what this poem is about:

The Gardener

When we moved in to our house, the garden was undeveloped. It was a small patch of grass, with a shed. And those things are still there, but they’ve been joined now by a row of roses at the back, with jasmine and passion flowers growing against the wall. Blueberry bushes bloom on one side, with strawberries and grapes beside them. On the other side is an apple tree, a plum tree, and a collection of pots growing a collection of colourful flowers that Jessica cuts and gives away or brings inside for us to enjoy. This year, we’re expanding our window boxes to hold even more flowers. As I write today there are rows of seedlings on the back stoop, reaching up and acclimatising, being prepared for planting—because none of this growth happens overnight. We’ve lived here seven years now, and the progress has been slow. It is measured in months and seasons and years, not hours and days. It was my wife, Jessica, who saw what our undeveloped little plot could become and patiently worked over the years to bring that vision to life. As I go outside to look at the buds forming and opening this spring, I see the fruit of her careful attention and I rise up and bless her for bringing such abundance and beauty to our home.

Tree House (a poem)

Tomorrow, my wife Jessica and I celebrate twenty years of marriage. Two decades sounds like a lot to me, but—doesn’t everyone say this?—it seems like it’s gone quickly. When we first got married, I wrote a poem for Jessica about how our love was in Spring, and I didn’t know what seasons would come, but with God’s help we would keep growing through them all. Twenty years—and many different seasons—later we’ve made our home in this growing love. That’s what this poem is about:

Tea And The Sous-Chef (two poems)

It was my wife Jessica’s birthday yesterday, and these two poems are in honour of her and the many ordinary moments we share together.

Tea

Do you want a cuppa tea?
She said to me
And I said yes—
Because
I always want a tea
If she is drinking it
With me

The Sous-Chef

Jessica works magic
With the chicken
On the hob
While I stand by
And peel the spuds
Because that is a job
That requires little magic
But I like to be
Nearby
In proximity to her
I think that any job will do—
Being with her is the magic,
So now you can call me Sous

Commitment Is A Ball

Our world today is flooded with so many options in so many areas of life, from relationships to work to how to spend weekends. In a climate like this, long-term commitments can feel like little more than limitations on our freedom to choose. Then again, what good are a thousand options if we never choose one? That’s what this poem is about:

A Happy Beginning

“And they lived happily ever after” may be a cliché, but it’s still satisfying. After all the troubles and difficulties of a good story, we love to see the happy couple roll away in their carriage as the credits start rolling. Of course, we also know in the back of our minds that any “ever after” on earth will include more troubles and difficulties in the days and years ahead. But after all they have been through, we wouldn’t want to mention that. It’s the end of the story, leave them alone. But in real life, a wedding is not the end of the story. It’s the beginning of a new chapter, one that could easily be longer and more complex than anything that came before it.

The Middle Years

My wife and I got married 15 years ago this week. Shortly after, I wrote a short poem for my new bride:

Are there seasons to love, new months and years bring?
If seasons there are, our love is the Spring
A sapling still budding, fresh fruit on the vine
With roots planted deep in the well of Divine

Must needs there be Winter? I haven’t a clue
My prayer is to always be growing the New
But seasons can come, and seasons can go
Our love will remain, it will always be so

Though slowly, yet surely, this oak of the Lord
Will grow up precisely as it has been told
Till stands in God’s garden a tree strong and true
That brings Him a smile as He’s passing through

I suppose it’s natural when you begin something to think of the ending. But there’s something else I didn’t think of so much back then, something we’re living a lot of right now. It’s something you might call “the middle”, or in the words of the poem, that “slowly, yet surely” bit. Saplings may be full of exciting potential, and mature oaks of awe-inspiring strength, but it’s the transformation from one to the other that accounts for the majority of the life of the tree. And our marriage.

Continue reading The Middle Years

Don’t Assume You Don’t Assume

When groups of people live together on the same piece of earth, we have to learn how to get along. Granted, we’re often not very good at it, but even if we spend a lot of time arguing, we still need each other and depend on each other quite a bit more than we’d usually like to admit. And that’s not all: we also influence each other quite a bit more than we’d usually like to admit. Oddly enough, you can even see this in what we choose to argue about and the arguments that we use.

Continue reading Don’t Assume You Don’t Assume