\u201cI don\u2019t want us to be afraid of adversity,\u201d my husband says.<\/p>\n
We\u2019re in the van, on our way home from church, of course, because that\u2019s when many of our fights happen, the boys in the back eating granola bars and my face in my hands.<\/p>\n
Trent reaches an arm out, touches my sleeve. \u201c<\/b>We can still be a team and disagree,\u201d he says. \u201cBeing a team doesn\u2019t mean being the same. It means working together to find a unified front, and presenting that front to the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
We\u2019re arguing about something small, but to me it represents something bigger \u2013 because you know those couples, the ones that never fight about anything, the ones who laugh endearingly at each other\u2019s jokes and say, we\u2019ve never disagreed in our lives<\/em>?<\/p>\n Yeah, well, that hasn\u2019t been us. Our first year of marriage can be described by the holes in our walls \u2013 holes which I punched, because I found being married so difficult and not because of the man I\u2019m married to. No, he\u2019s an incredible farm boy who loves God and family and cooks me breakfast and makes me laugh until I snort.<\/p>\n No, it\u2019s because I find it hard to share anything, period. I find it hard to share my closet, my bed, my heart because I\u2019ve been hurt too many times and I\u2019m scared of pain<\/i>. I\u2019m scared of being let down by someone and I\u2019m scared of suffering.<\/p>\n But to love means to suffer. There\u2019s a certain denying of one\u2019s self so there might be new life.<\/p>\n In the same way that cutting flowers\u2019 stems allows them to drink more water and last longer \u2013 cutting our selfishness allows us to absorb more grace.<\/b><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n As Woody Allen says, \u201cTo love is to suffer. To avoid suffering, one must not love. But then, one suffers from not loving. Therefore, to love is to suffer; not to love is to suffer; to suffer is to suffer.\u201d<\/p>\n To love someone doesn\u2019t mean you\u2019ll agree all the time or find each other adorable or witty all the time. It doesn\u2019t mean you never fart or have bad breath, it doesn\u2019t meant that you won\u2019t struggle to even LIKE the person some days. And it doesn\u2019t mean you won\u2019t make mistakes.<\/p>\n Love means for better or worse you are committed to caring for the heart of someone else. You are willing to die to yourself, to compromise, to share, to believe, to keep the promise even when it hurts.<\/p>\n For the first three years of our marriage, I starved myself.<\/i> And my husband suffered silently, watching me get skinnier and skinnier, and when he touched me he nearly cried for the bones I\u2019d become. I couldn\u2019t sleep \u2013 he set up a TV in our bedroom because that\u2019s the only way I could doze, was in front of a screen, but as soon as he quietly shut it off, I would wake up and spend the night tossing and turning and eventually move to the couch.<\/p>\n I was addicted to sleeping pills and coffee<\/i> and one day, three years after getting married in my parents\u2019 backyard, Trent told me he couldn\u2019t do it anymore.<\/p>\n We\u2019d been screaming at each other, driving home from a friend\u2019s house, and I was at the wheel and tried to turn the car into traffic. Trent took hold of the wheel and pulled us over to safety. I sobbed into my hands and he said, \u201cEmily, I can\u2019t do this anymore. I need you to choose between me and food \u2013 because if it\u2019s food, I\u2019m out.\u201d<\/p>\n He forced me to choose because he cared about me. We were both suffering and love stepped in and asked a difficult thing.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n And now we have two beautiful little boys together. Because that is what the act of loving makes \u2013 it creates life.<\/p>\n Contrary to what we\u2019ve heard, love is not a feeling. It\u2019s a choice.<\/strong><\/p>\n Let\u2019s not be afraid of adversity.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s keep the promise\u00a0<\/i>\u2013 growing wrinkled and old and crazy together, and see what God can do when we surrender two broken hearts to him.<\/p>\n He\u2019ll make us shine.<\/p>\n Emily Wierenga is wife to a math-teacher husband; mother and foster mother to four boys; an artist, columnist and the author of\u00a0Chasing Silhouettes: How t<\/a>o<\/a>\u00a0help a Loved One Battling an Eating Disorder<\/a>,\u00a0Mom in the Mirror: Body Image, Beauty and Life After Pregnancy<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0A Promise in Pieces<\/a>\u00a0(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 visit\u00a0emilywierenga.com<\/a>. Find her on\u00a0Twitter<\/a>orFacebook<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t want us to be afraid of adversity,\u201d my husband says. We\u2019re in the van, on our way home from church, of course, because that\u2019s when many of our fights happen, the boys in the back eating granola bars and my face in my hands. Trent reaches an arm out, touches my sleeve. \u201cWe […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":3211,"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":[100,102],"tags":[182,170,145,26,32,138,137,442,160],"class_list":["post-697","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-faith","category-relationships","tag-circle-of-trust","tag-emily","tag-encouraging","tag-family","tag-friendship","tag-intimacy","tag-marriage","tag-suffering","tag-thought-provoking"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/697","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=697"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/697\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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