The other night we left the boys with my sister, rented a hotel room in the mountains. We planned to snowboard the next day.<\/p>\n
We bought some beer and take-out and I couldn\u2019t rest that night. For hours, we lay there in our separate beds because the room came with two, but I couldn\u2019t sleep. And I cried.<\/p>\n
Trent stretched out his hand across the space between our beds, his fingers reaching for me in the dark. \u201cHold on to me, Em,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m here.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHold on to me, Em. I\u2019m here.\u201d<\/p>\n
We\u2019re not exactly John and Yoko.<\/p>\n
Trent\u2019s a math geek and I\u2019m a literary nerd. He\u2019s loud and I\u2019m quiet. He\u2019s athletic and I run into walls. We both like books. We both love camping. And we\u2019re both over-the moon crazy about each other and our boys.<\/p>\n
But marriage has come hard for us.<\/p>\n
Hard, with years of anorexia and insomnia and fists punching the wall.<\/p>\n
I\u2019mputting away the laundry, the seven loads which Trent folded for me while playing a computer game, because between my books and my boys, I can\u2019t seem to take a shower or do any house cleaning. Let alone fold the laundry.<\/p>\n
And I\u2019m putting the baskets away when he calls \u201cSuppertime,\u201d because Trent\u2019s made burgers, and on the table, a salad: with peppers and grated Jalapeno cheese, lettuce, bacon bits, and grated carrot, and chopped onions which always make Trent cry\u2013it\u2019s the only time I see him cry\u2013 and \u201cI made you fancy salad,\u201d he says.<\/b><\/p>\n
Like my friend says, there\u2019s nothing sexier than a salad-making man.<\/p>\n
But truth is I\u2019d be a wreck without my salad-making man.<\/i><\/p>\n
The one who held me those long, skinny anorexia years.<\/p>\n
Our best conversations happen over a board game because games are Trent\u2019s love language, and we\u2019re still getting the intimacy thing.<\/p>\n
I used to fight him when I got mad, sometimes with my fists, and he\u2019d shake his head and grab my wrists and then finally leave. Slam the door and drive off while I wept into the couch pillows, but that doesn\u2019t happen anymore.<\/p>\n
No man is perfect, and Trent will say things that unintentionally hurt me, or he\u2019ll forget to take out the trash, but I will also do things\u2013like forget his birthday, as I did one year\u2013and ours is the kind of marriage that throbs with love.<\/p>\n
Ours is the kind of marriage that throbs with love.<\/p>\n
The kind of love that will not give up: not through anorexia, not through insomnia, not through moves to Korea or moves home to take care of parents with cancer, not through slammed doors or tears or fists, because there\u2019s also the salad. There\u2019s the laundry. There\u2019s Trent taking the kids to his parents so I can write. There\u2019s him reaching out in the dark to hold me, to pray for me.<\/p>\n
I want the kind of marriage that dances into its Golden Anniversary, that kisses each other on wrinkled cheeks and laughs at each other\u2019s jokes long after the sun has wound down.<\/p>\n
I want the kind of marriage that dances into its Golden Anniversary<\/a>.<\/p>\n And maybe the secret is to never stop reaching out in the dark. To never stop taking hold of each other\u2019s hands. And to never let go.<\/p>\n Not even for a moment.<\/p>\n Emily Wierenga is wife to a math-teacher husband; mother and foster mother to four boys; an artist, columnist and the author ofChasing Silhouettes: How t<\/a>o<\/a>help a Loved One Battling an Eating Disorder<\/a>,Mom in the Mirror: Body Image, Beauty and Life After Pregnancy<\/a>andA Promise in Pieces<\/a>(Spring 2014). Emily speaks at women\u2019s retreats, universities, churches and conferences, about her journey with anorexia nervosa, and was one of the keynote speakers at the premiere Christian eating disorders conference, Hungry for Hope 2013. Shelives in rural Alberta, where she snowboards, makes wine and goes geocaching. She also plays guitar and paints.For more info, please visitwww.emilywierenga.com<\/a>. Find her onTwitter<\/a>orFacebook<\/a>.<\/p>\n The other night we left the boys with my sister, rented a hotel room in the mountains. We planned to snowboard the next day. We bought some beer and take-out and I couldn\u2019t rest that night. For hours, we lay there in our separate beds because the room came with two, but I couldn\u2019t sleep. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":12496,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"0","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_seopress_news_disabled":"","_seopress_video_disabled":"","_seopress_video":[],"_seopress_pro_schemas_manual":[],"_seopress_pro_rich_snippets_disable_all":"","_seopress_pro_rich_snippets_disable":[],"_seopress_pro_schemas":[],"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[102],"tags":[145,32,146,186,160,187,114,75],"class_list":["post-14991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-relationships","tag-encouraging","tag-friendship","tag-husband","tag-romance","tag-thought-provoking","tag-transparency","tag-wisdom","tag-work"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14991"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14991\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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