>Famously, the willow tree is able to bend and give and twist and not break. I am not willowy. There, I admitted it. I am stiff and staunch and stubborn, like the oak tree. That is what the last several months of my life have taught me with its cumulative experiences. I see things a certain way, and I dig in my heels, and that is how I want them to be. My way is not always the right way, but it seems I have seen things for a fairly long time, the Wright way. And now, I must learn to bend. To give. To twist and not break. What a daunting change. I have always (now I know, pridefully) considered myself as someone who adapted easily to change. But, apparently, in addition to being stubborn, I have also been delusional! Or maybe I am just getting older and set in my ways. Anyway, my dad pointed out to me that I have always been attracted to adventure and variety, but in his opinion, I have never taken kindly to change. *Pop!* Bubble burst. Add that to a mounting list of needle pricks my ego has been administered lately. Think you’ve got it all together? Pile it all into a moving truck and then into a storage building, and TRY to figure out where you’ve put it. I had to remember, upon returning from my weekend Mother’s Day road trip to Marshall with my mom last night, to try and unearth a prescription that was in some box, somewhere. Luckily, I’m a moving box labeler, and finding the box was not as difficult a task as it could have been (needle in a haystack). So, with a fair amount of ease, I went to the box, and I fine tuned my disorderly way of thinking to remember exactly which box-within-a-box I had stored the prescriptions in for ease of unpacking. There it was! Then, I opened a few more boxes. Boxes are not my friend. Especially not moving boxes. Why? They are full of change. Not coins (well, some have coins), either. They usher out the old and bear in the new. Maybe that is why I am hesitating to unpack them. They are full of change. And I’ve finally caught up with the adjustments I’ve had to make thus far. This whole purge and merge experience has surely been in answer to my foolish prayer to God that he break me down and show me my need for him. I’m like that. I have to be backed all the way into the corner or beat all the way down in order for me to perform the simple act of letting go of my anxieties and to believe that God will supply my needs. Or at the very least to accept the comfort and calme God offeres me when I feel like I am in the vortex of it all. Let’s just say that that little prayer has been answered ten times over, and like that one where you pray for patience, I do not advise uttering those fateful, pleading words unless you surround yourself with seatbelts and airbags and rubber walls and sympathetic ears.

All of this to say that I was bombarded this weekend with questions of “how is marital bliss?” and “how’s married life?” and “where is Chris?” and smiling sheepishly in response, I could only think to say, “It’s good — it’s the biggest total change I’ve ever made in my life, and it’s weird, and I let him have a break from me this weekend, and do you want the Hollywood or the Dallas answer?” Being married is great, but it’s no cakewalk, and I feel like more people should take the responsiblity of being honest with people when they ask — so that newlyweds who are smacked in the face with all that change do not feel guilty or bad about themselves when they truly understand that being and staying married is one of the most difficult things that one can ever choose to do. And that “loving a person just the way they are, it’s no small thing (Sara Groves).” Chris loves me just the way I am. And that is CERTAINLY no small thing. I MUST drive him crazy on an hourly basis. But if he’s still here on the eve of two months of marriage to a woman who has been ridiculously ill and uncomfortable in her own skin for nearly six straight weeks, he will be here when we celebrate our silver and golden anniversaries. I know that. And I love him for that. God blesses us both!