{"id":379,"date":"2010-09-27T11:26:08","date_gmt":"2010-09-27T11:26:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/thinplaces\/2010\/09\/from-marital-bliss-to-the-bottom-and-back-again.html"},"modified":"2010-09-27T11:26:08","modified_gmt":"2010-09-27T11:26:08","slug":"from-marital-bliss-to-the-bottom-and-back-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/2010\/09\/from-marital-bliss-to-the-bottom-and-back-again.html","title":{"rendered":"From Marital Bliss to the Bottom and Back Again"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n\"holdinghands.jpg\"<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Peter and I have a weekly ritual. It usually occurs on
\nThursday nights, when my mom comes to visit her grandchildren and we have a
\nfree babysitter. But it started even before we had kids, when we moved into a
\ndorm with thirty boys and realized that we had to get away from the incessant
\nknocks on the door and phone calls and so forth. We go out to dinner and talk. It
\nis a refuge, a sacred time, a time, in Peter’s words, where it feels like we
\ncan accomplish anything.<\/p>\n

We have another weekly ritual. At least, it’s supposed to
\nhappen weekly, on Tuesday nights. We call it a family meeting. I keep a running
\nlist of all the stuff we need to talk about–scheduling, tasks, refinancing our
\nhouse, signing Penny up for swimming lessons, replacing the plywood kitchen
\ntable with one made out of wood, signing up for electronic billing. It was
\ndesigned to help us. Rather than spending dinner conversation on tasks and
\nrequests, rather than me feeling like a nag every time I ask about a project,
\nwe have a set time to discuss all that stuff that keeps a household going. And
\nyet, family meeting time is a time when the world comes crashing down upon us,
\nwhen the tension builds with every item on the list, a time, in Peter’s words,
\nwhere it feels like we can accomplish nothing. <\/p>\n

On date nights, time stands still. On family meeting nights,
\nthere is never enough time.<\/p>\n

I keep hoping there’s a way to change it. Abandon family
\nmeetings and pretend the porch doesn’t need sweeping, the kids don’t need
\ndoctor appointments, we don’t need to buy a minivan.  <\/span>Or somehow come up with the money to hire someone to deal
\nwith it all. Or somehow become more gracious with each other, or devote more
\ntime throughout the week to household responsibilities, or let go of some
\nunnecessary image of our lives. <\/p>\n

But at the end of the day, perhaps this is what marriage is
\nall about. Soaring and sinking. Together. Slogging through bills and weariness
\nand grocery lists and then getting to talk about politics and literature and
\nfears for the future and hopes for our children. Having a weekly reminder of
\nour very real and human limitations, and a weekly experience of possibility. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Peter and I have a weekly ritual. It usually occurs on Thursday nights, when my mom comes to visit her grandchildren and we have a free babysitter. But it started even before we had kids, when we moved into a dorm with thirty boys and realized that we had to get away from the incessant…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":88,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family"],"yoast_head":"\nFrom Marital Bliss to the Bottom and Back Again - Thin Places<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/2010\/09\/from-marital-bliss-to-the-bottom-and-back-again.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"From Marital Bliss to the Bottom and Back Again - Thin Places\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Peter and I have a weekly ritual. 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Two major life experiences have shaped her writing and her faith\u00e2\u20ac\u201dcaring for her mother-in-law as she battled cancer and welcoming her daughter Penny into the world after she was diagnosed at birth with Down syndrome. Both experiences expanded and enriched her understanding of what it means to be human and to receive each and every person as a gift.\u00c2\u00a0 A graduate of Princeton University and Princeton Theological Seminary, she is the author of Penelope Ayers: A Memoir, and the forthcoming A Good and Perfect Gift (Bethany House). Her essays have appeared in First Things, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Christian Century, ChristianityToday.com, and Bloom, among other online venues.","sameAs":["http:\/\/amyjuliabecker.com"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/author\/amyjuliabecker"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/88"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=379"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}