Marriage Actually - An honest look at marriage

Are We There Yet?

by Marc Audet on September 26th, 2008

Much like a child on a drive to some far off distant place like San Antonio from Dallas, I feel like asking “Are we there yet?”  This has been longer than the roughly five hour drive to the Alamo City.  Have we arrived at our destination?

As a couple,   no way!

It has been twenty-eight years in the making, but we are still working on our relationship as husband & wife.   Why, you might ask?  Because as we progress along in one area of our relationship another aspect seems to suddenly need our attention and tweaking.

Life happens with us as individuals, and it enters into the marriage.   We as a couple being one flesh, now have to change.

It could be a career situation.

Say the job moves you up the ladder.  You now have new responsibilities and sometimes those get in the way of your family time.   I can remember managing a jewelry store in a  northeast Ft. Worth suburb.  It was November and gearing up for the busiest time of all, Christmas.  The store was a runaway freight train and drove the previous manager to step down.  My weekends and regular days off were lost.  It was a longer drive and caused me to be away from home  14 -15 hours a day.   The holiday season in retail is hectic enough.

I had to get a grip on the store and try to balance our family time.  I remember Sunday mornings driving to the store with Marye & the two kids we had at the time.  We would pick up donuts on the way.  The store had been a catalog showroom and now was a free-standing jewelry store.  While Marye helped me to tag sale merchandise, I  pulled a red wagon from the basement warehouse level,  and some other things Erin & Chris could play with in the vast area that was now empty.

That had been a trying season and after inventory and regional meetings, I had the only store in the Dallas Market to meet it’s goals for December and actually beat what I was told by a VP and Regional Manager was an unachievable goal for the store.  I figured it was going to be a good thing.

Unfortunate for me, the district and regional staff had wanted the pilot program to fail miserably.  I was let go.   My career was on a journey in the wilderness for a few years.  Here when I thought I had made it across the finish line first in a race where I was the underdog, a new task was put in front of me in a troubled time economically in the early 1990’s.

As a man faced with these challenges, it not only affected me on this trip.  It affected Marye, and our marriage.

One thing that worked out great was that during the months to come I started to be the dad that I hadn’t been to my children.   I had let my career get in the way.  Marye can tell you I definitely wasn’t the husband  I was supposed to be.  And God worked on both of those things.

That was one journey when I kept asking God “Are we there yet?”  The ride was longer than I would have had it to be.  Marye would say the same.  But when the dust settled from our feet a couple years later, that road trip that seemed way too long was ending in tremendous restoration.  The home we lost on the trip was  replaced by God with one twice as large and for not much more than the one we lost.  I lost my job a few weeks before closing on the new house and a week after we closed on the house I had a job with a substantial raise.

In our marriage relationship we have had similar journeys.  We are on one now with our sex life, with my medicines, and health.  God continues to grow us closer through the trip and it will be so much better when we get there.

We are on a trip now asking “Are we there yet?”

Where is your marriage on your road trip?  Are you there yet?

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