The Molded Middle

It was a few weeks ago that my love, my longest love, my truest love and I ran away from life for a little while.  It was three glorious days of slow and lazy, relaxed and easy.   We read books, watched movies, planned for village and talked.  We slept long and hard.

Then we came home.

It was hard to get out of bed that first day back.

And I thought back to the two mornings we had, not at home, but away.........I got up so easily.  I got up and dressed, early even.  There was no lingering, no real sleeping in.

Why?

There were no children, no clothes to wash/fold/put away, no meals to be made, no errands to run................nothing.  What would propel me out of bed?

And it came to me.

It was the bed.

At home our bed is perfectly formed to us, to Joe and I.  It is the bed of our marriage.  We are the type that liked to be pushed up against one another, snuggled up tight.  It's how we start the night and how we begin the day.  At some point in the night we separate but always we find our way back.

The bed of our getaway was not formed to us, didn't have that well-worn indentation.  There was no rolling in, no molded middle.  It was easy to get up and out because it wasn't the comfort of home.  It wasn't the cozy bed of our marriage.

And as I lay there...........no wanting to get out of bed on that cold morning, that back to my reality morning.............I thought isn't that the beauty of marriage...........the molded middle that you find yourself in, that growing in - not caving in, but growing in process of marriage.

When Joe and I were first married our lives reflected the bed of our marriage at that time - there were two sides, we each had our own things on our own sides.  There was no molded middle - there were sides of the bed, we each had our designated spot.  But as the years wore on and the bed got pushed up against the wall and the kids came and the bed became more of a haven than a place just for sleep the sides were not as clear cut, there were no designated spots, there was less ownership and more mingling of stuff.  And so it happened with our marriage - there was far less "me" and far more "we", there was a softening, a bending towards one another and not so much this is what "I" am, this is who "I" am but this is who "we" are.

And it's good.

It's that whole two becoming one thing again.........and I love in Ephesians where it states it is a great mystery because it is, it is a complete mystery how completely two do, indeed, become one and what that means for the people involved.

It's mysterious and amazing and unfathomable and only from God that two people could ever join together to become so much more and to live, work, dream, move in conjunction with one another through this world.

And I am so grateful.

I am grateful for the bed of my marriage - the lived in, loved in, broken in bed that is a reflection of the years of marriage I have had thus far.  For the years have felt lived in - living out the conversations of our first months, living out the dreams we have dreamed and building up of a life together.  The years have felt loved in - oh how I waited for what seemed to be so long to be so loved, never have I felt more cherished and more fully who I was meant to be - as a wife, as a mother, as a woman.  And the years have been broken in - the breaking of all me, all the time, the brokenness in me being worked though and the restoration of us.

My hope is that we have many years together, in the years to come - years that will continue to reveal to us the mystery that is, indeed, great.  And that the molded middle will continue to shape and grow and hold us close to one another - our lives to be a reflection of the bed of our marriage.