Surrender Dorothy

Some days this all feels so new and other days I can't remember what it felt like to not wait to see Josh at the end of my day or have him roll to my side of the bed on a cold night. I am settling into this married life and getting used to the fact I can never get used to being the same. This is all so gradual. Yes, it is amazing and wonderful and challenging, but as I said; it's gradual. It's a journey, a sojourn, a personal and relational evolution.

My life didn't start when I met Josh, as I often hear people say in movies... but more so it grew. A few years into a shared life I don't feel like life has just begun or I'm now the real me or the new me, but I do feel like me amplified or really, me in Technicolor.

It's like Dorothy's life in the Wizard of Oz. She lives a simple little black and white life. There are the family struggles and occasional villains, but all in all it is simple and sweet and happy. One day that starts out like any other, she is surprised, picked up, and twisted around and around only to land in this new place where everything was in Technicolor. She was still Dorothy, but now she was a girl who wore a blue dress and saw a yellow path and red poppies and an Emerald City. In this new place, people asked things of her, saw things in her, frightened her, excited her, encouraged her, and disappointed her. She walked a path towards what she thought was her answer to everything with companions who were both strong but fearful, smart but foolish,loving but wounded. One day Dorothy finally made it to that Emerald City only to discover that this place of perfection and easy fixes and magic solutions was a charade no one could keep up. There wasn't this physical place where nothing bad ever happened and no one ever hurt you and you never felt alone and everything was fixed by a hidden man with a booming voice. What there was, was a long yellow path that she had to keep following no matter how hard it was and no matter how scary it seemed. There were companions on that journey who needed encouragement and hope because they were scared too. There were second chances, and third ones and forth ones. But mainly there was the realization that Dorothy was the Dorothy she always could have been, it just took someone flipping on the Technicolor and her deciding that no matter what, she'd stay on that brick road.

So I guess that's how I'd sum up marriage so far as we are headed into our third year. I am learning to be the me that I never let myself be in black and white. I am the me who is finding strength in weakness and assurance in the unknown. I am the me who has finally learned to be strong and brave and kind and confident, but to also nurture those things in my partner on this journey and be willing to admit I am lost and need someone else to read the map from time to time. I am learning to surrender the girl I thought I was and release the rights I clung to so tightly only to realize they were such a small fraction of the joy and strength I could experience.