The Honeymoon Ended

We've been married for five days short of a year now, and I have my laptop back from the fix-y place! What does that have to do with much? Well it means my keyboard is fixed. And it means I'd like to blog about marriage stuff for a bit, maybe over the next few days.

I'll share with you the time when we hit reality.

"Are you ready, Mrs. Becar?" Joseph asked as we stood atop the flight of stairs, about to run down into the crowd of people with bubble wands and into our painted car, off into the sunset...

"I am."

We spent the next few days in Midway, UT at the Zurmatt resort. The town is all adorably Swiss themed. We watched movies, had picnics, attempted mountain biking. (My bike was a little messed up for this so I was huffing and puffing miles behind Joe before realizing I wasn't just a wimp... I was on a messed up bike.)

That Sunday we went to church together and spent the first hour apart as newlyweds. That was hard. We went back to our painted car and got cheers from people we didn't know. We drove through the mountains to a secluded park area and asked the rangers if we could park there for free.

"Depends, did you really just get married?"
"Two days ago!"
"Well enjoy the picnic for free, on us. It'll be a wedding gift."

We were giddy off wedding fumes, Joseph and I. We drove back down through the mountains as the sun was setting and we drove into the parking stall of our first home together.

Have I told you about this home? It was in shoot-it-up town. It was very reasonably priced for a good reason. I was unaware of this picking it out. And Joseph wasn't there to pick it out. We needed a home for a few weeks, there was a time crunch... so we took this home.

Let me tell you a bit more about this home. A few days before the wedding, Joseph and I packed up our respective earthly possessions in our respective homes before driving to Ogden to spend the night there with our respective families before the wedding.

We did not participate in our move. How incredibly blessed we were that our families moved all of those earthly possessions, including the ones acquired at the reception, to our new home. We didn't do any of the moving, they did it all for us. That was such a burden off our shoulders.

Now back to driving into that parking stall, and walking into a home Joseph had never seen. We opened the door. The blinds were closed, the lights were off, and the apartment was crammed to bursting with boxes and furniture. Nothing had a place. We attempted to put away a few things before we completely lost it.

Joseph went to lay down on the bed and I moved all of the boxes that were in our bedroom into the closet and just outside the bedroom door before shutting the door, opening the blinds and the windows, and imagining that the little bedroom was the only place in the world. It was clean and it was safe.

Suddenly the reality of marriage came to us. There were no more bubble wands. The paint was fading off the car. We hadn't gone grocery shopping but our families were generous enough to stalk us with enough for food the next little bit. Park rangers wouldn't be giving us free parking passes. Random people at church wouldn't be cheering for us anymore.

It was Joseph and I.

I loved the engagement period because everyone wanted to look at my ring, everyone wanted to know what our colors were, everyone wanted to know how we met and when we were getting married and every detail of our lives. We were never alone, we were constantly surrounded by attention. I think I was babied more through the engagement than I had been babied when I was a baby.

And as I shut that door to our bedroom, shutting out the mess outside, I shut out the rest of the world. Joseph and I were truly alone now, people weren't going to be taking care of us anymore as they had before. No one was going to come to our home to clean it up, we had to do that.

It was difficult for a few moments. We sat there in silence and wondered how we'd make it work.

But Joe made a joke or something. Somehow we were laughing. The sun was shining through the windows and our bed was made with a beautiful quilt and the carpet was clean and the walls were clean and white... and marriage didn't seem as scary as it had when we walked into that dark house.

I consider that to be the time the honeymoon truly ended. I audibly stated that our honeymoon was over, and I didn't expect it to end so soon. Despite it ending, however, I've never truly lost that giddy I have for Joe. I always feel fortunate to have him, ridiculously blessed to be with him. We're a lot more comfortable with each other than we were a year ago, but I still want to impress him daily, to surprise him daily, and he does the same to me, daily. In that aspect, the honeymoon is not over. And I hope, in that aspect, that it never will be over.

But I will say that in that last 360 days we've faced more challenges than anticipated. Nobody expects the challenges they face. Maybe they do, actually, but we didn't. Despite the trials, life is far more wonderful than it was before I shut that door and made us alone. In shutting that door I made us a family too, Joseph and I. That's worth any mess of an apartment ever.

And just so you know, we cleaned it up the next day.