A Whole Half

Even a good marriage needs community

I arrived at the northwoods retreat flustered and holding back tears, unable to fix my face for the church staff who greeted me with enthusiasm.

“It’s going to be okay,” they reassured me, “you’re not the only parent here solo this weekend.”

“I know,” I said, taking a deep breath.

Between the stress of yet another illness in the yawning stretch of winter and making a day-of decision to leave Garth behind and take the kids alone on a weekend church retreat, I was a bundle of nerves. I didn’t know how to articulate that it felt like half of me was left at home.

I’m a whole person. I am capable of operating like a regular human. But somewhere in 14 years of marriage the line between don’t want to and can’t faded, and that weekend without my co-parent and best friend felt like the left side of my own body was missing.

A cellphone photo of Garth and me during college

I started dating Garth when I was 17, and that was 17 years ago. I’ve been with the same man for half my lifetime. From this point on, we’ve been together for longer than we spent apart.

I never wanted to be the woman who didn’t know who she was without her husband, and yet, that’s what I’ve become. But I can’t say it’s a bad thing. Not for me, at least. I’m past the point of feeling like a failure for being defined by my marriage or dependent on a man, even as I strive to advocate for women’s rights to not do that.

My mantra at 17 through age 21 was, “I’m a strong, independent woman!” I prided myself on figuring things out and making my own plans, being fine with showing up places alone. I was young enough to want more time to not be defined by marriage, and in love enough to commit to a union with one man for the rest of my life. But then years of isolation, financial scarcity, severe mental health challenges, and sleep deprivation stripped me of my self-sufficiency. I found myself horrifyingly insufficient, and eventually I had to learn to accept the truth of it.

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The moment I knew I wasn’t afraid to marry him was also a foreshadowing of all that marriage would be: while we were engaged, I underwent a surgical biopsy for a lump in my breast. It turned out to be benign, but in the weeks leading up to the surgery, we braced ourselves. Three months from our wedding day, nineteen year old Garth came with me and sat in the waiting room while I was put under anesthesia. It’s occurring to me as I write this that I’ve never asked how many hours he sat there alone and waiting. A few days later, when I needed help washing my hair because I couldn’t raise my right arm over my head, he came and leaned over the edge of the bathtub at my parents’ house, washing my hair for me. I sat on a footstool shirtless and bandaged, wrapped in a towel, resting the back of my head on the edge of the tub while he carefully sudsed me up and rinsed out the shampoo and conditioner. I apologized for needing him, and he scoffed gently, drying my hair with a towel and helping me up.

Married or not, we need other people. God said in the very beginning that “it is not good for man to be alone” and that hasn’t changed. We are not expected to be all-sufficient. In fact, our neediness reminds us that we aren’t.

Our 8 year wedding anniversary photo. The first photo that I looked at and thought we were starting to look old.

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That same weekend while I was away and my husband was taking himself to urgent care, our neighbor’s husband died. We attended his memorial and learned that he was an Eagle Scout, fluent in Spanish, a writer, and enjoyed literature; he would have made the perfect match for us as a neighbor. We are grieved by the loss of time with this man we didn’t get to know, but even moreso for his widow.

His memorial was also a testament to the life and community they had built together. She is not alone in her grief, just as she was not alone in caring for her husband in his last year and half of life after a stroke. We saw, once again, that marriage is not simply the most important relationship of your life, sacred as it is. Married or not—and especially because marriage is finite—we need a whole community in order to thrive. They’re the ones who show up to help you transfer from your wheelchair to your bed after you’ve been debilitated. They’re the ones who bring meals, mow the lawn, and walk the dog when you’re working harder than ever with the tasks of meeting your income needs and caretaking. They’re the ones who show up to clean out the many devices no longer needed in your household, the ones who step up and put together a memorial so you don’t have to make all the decisions, the ones who come over or invite you out long after the casket is closed to ensure you are not alone this world.

This is why, when the opportunity presented itself last summer, we moved into the neighborhood close to our church. It’s why we let the kids’ friends come home with them straight off the bus, why we ask again what that neighbor’s name is and exchange phone numbers. It’s why we take trips and open our home to out-of-town friends to make sure we continue living life together with those who have already been there for the long haul.

We’ve taken a long time to learn all this. In college and the earliest years of parenthood, we knew we “needed” community, but we knew nothing of interdependence. We had families who would show up as they could. Having a close family is a good and desirable thing (I would even say ideal), but as much as we love them, we should want for them what we need ourselves: a strong presence of communal care around them. People who help them, and us, remember that we’re all only human in the many ways that manifests, lest we forget.

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At last month’s retreat, friends from church stepped up to help care for my kids and made sure I got to enjoy my time there, too. Each of my kids made a friend to stick with for the weekend, and as an equalizer, everyone kept an eye out for everyone else’s kids.

While the smell of fireplace smoke and my inability to build a quick starter fire, the view of the wintery lake at golden hour, and the clear night sky as I walked the kids back to our room for the night were moments I was keenly aware of Garth’s absence, I made a point of letting myself experience it all just for me.

I am still a whole person on my own—worthy of good experiences and community and care.

My therapist, enthusiastic about the security of my marriage, has suggested that I write a marriage book. I told her that I don’t know if I’ll ever do that (for so many reasons), but I could sum up my advice like this:

Garth is my best friend. That’s why we’re married and why our marriage is easy and good. It’s not hard for us to love each other. We delight in one another. We strive to outdo each other with the ways we care for the other.

A reenactment of a wedding photo (that I have a digital copy of somewhere, maybe, I think)

We are two whole, individual people who, from now on, will have spent more of life with each other than apart. Our lives have been redefined by our marriage—there’s no escaping that. For over half my life, he has been the other half to my whole life. None of what we have today exists without the two of us walking this life together. And that is all good and holy, but it is still not enough—even if we want it to be.

In the end, it’s the people we’ve met along the way whose lives have intertwined with ours that will not only help keep this marriage strong but care for one of us when the other is gone.