In her latest book, Acedia & Me, Kathleen Norris writes about marriage in the chapter entitled, "The Quotidian Mysteries." She captures, for me, the things that I've discovered after almost 35 years of marriage. What she writes applies, also, to deep friendships. Here are a few highlights from the chapter to stimulate your thinking. (Quotidian, by the way, means "everyday, commonplace, ordinary.")
"The very nature of marriage means saying yes before you know what it will cost. Though you may say the 'I do' of the wedding ritual in all sincerity, it is the testing of that vow over time that makes you married...
In the give-and-take of married life, as each person learns from the other, both become, individually, and as a couple, much more than they could ever be on their own...
Over time we found that the accumulation of shared experiences provided a storehouse of memory that helped us bear the worst of circumstances. Our situation might be bad in the present, but it had not always been so...
...it is by means of repeating ordinary rituals and routines that we enhance the relationships that nourish and sustain us. A recent study that monitored the daily habits of couples in order to determine what produced good and stable marriages revealed that only one activity made a consistent difference, and that was the embracing of one's spouse at the beginning and end of each day...
Whatever you do repeatedly has the power to make you over into a different person--even if you're not totally 'engaged' in every minute...
It is all for the glory of God, and how we perform those often dispiriting duties, from the changing of a baby's diaper to the bathing of an aged parent, reveals what kind of God we worship."
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