~ Murphy's Law, marriage and manure

I'm not sure who Murphy was or why his law seems to be so prevalent in my life... or maybe it's just God keeping me humble, I'm not quite sure. In this case I'm not complaining though. I had mulled over posting the "tough times" post for a looooong time, and was most tempted to write it when things were really rough. Things were already getting better when I did finally decide to write it (it's too scary to write that kind of stuff when you're hanging on by a thread), but felt I needed to write it anyway. It's lonely to go through life pretending, and we'd had major (ahem, "MAJOR") issues for years (ahem, "YEARS"). 

Marriage is tough for every couple... hopefully it's more sweet than not, but let's be honest: a lot of the time you get overwhelmed by the mundane, and sometimes you just want to throttle your spouse or run away from home. And is it just me, or are there others out there like this: I can be extremely upset about something, and literally within hours or days of venting about it to someone, I'm totally over it. Gone. Zero. Zip. No wonder my very phlegmatic (look that one up) husband thought that my very sanguine (look that up too) personality was bipolar. The good thing about that is that with all the digging my shrink was having me do, it gave me the chance to really see everything for what it was and is; to grieve, rage, repent, and just generally process things that I'd swept under the rug without even realizing it. Even though I'd always thought I was a great communicator, there were layers and layers of things that I'd been trying so desperately to be (without being fed emotionally) that it just wasn't sustainable. And despite usually living very peacefully with each other, there were huge parts missing in our relationship. 

It seems beautifully paradoxical that the things I felt so desperately about before are FINALLY slowly ripening and blossoming into something real. I've been learning a lot about organic gardening lately and can't help seeing a similar analogy in my own life. Chemical fertilizers and pesticides are a short term fix with poisonous long term results: they strip the soil and leave it sterile over time, and things forced to grow and harvested and processed in unnatural ways lose their God-given full potential-- like a hothouse flower that's forced to bloom loses its lovely, natural fragrance as a result, or chemical-intensive and highly processed crops lose much of their nutrition. God has a way and a means to ripen a marriage and a family into something sweet and good, and if we don't take short cuts and instead do the work, he'll help us taste that sweetness. I can't believe I'm saying that marriage is like manure, but I am: sometimes it's just gross, but when you compost the manure and expose it to the heat of a covered compost pile (i.e., faith, patience, education and hope), over time it kills the weeds and turns into dark, sweet-smelling dirt that gives live-giving sustenance to your garden. The best things do take time.