Carrie Link

love.

STM and I treated ourselves to a very nice dinner on Saturday night. Took an elevator to the top of a skyscraper and had seats overlooking our fair city on a beautiful clear winter night. It was romantic. It was a big splurge for us. It was well deserved.

Not enough has been made of the fact that we celebrated eighteen years of marriage on New Year's Eve. I always tack on, "Plus six years of dating." He does not. "Dating is dating, marriage is marriage," he simply says as is his style, quick and to the point. And dating is dating and marriage is marriage, he's right.

He isn't right about everything but he's right about a lot of things, and I have fought this truth for far too many of our years together. If he were right, that must mean I was wrong, and well, we can't have that, can we? I think it was Caroline Myss' words, and I'm paraphrasing here, that finally made it sink in for me - there are things that are true, and there is Truth. True does not equal The Truth.

The Truth, for me, is that marriage is a spiritual practice. Marriage is a safe place to learn the lessons I came here to learn. Marriage has made me a better person. Marriage has held a spot light up to my (many) areas of challenge, and cultivated my areas of strength. For me, marriage has been unnatural, and something I've had to learn to do. Parenting, on the other hand, while hard, has been second nature. Perhaps it has to do with past lives, perhaps it has to do with my broken homes as a child, perhaps it it has to do with what I've chosen to read and learn and ask about, versus what I have not.

I found this book recently, literally, there it was on my shelf, didn't even know I had it and have no recollection of ever buying it or being given it as a gift, The Couple's Tao Te Ching. I love it. It's simple. It's inspiring. It's true. And that The Truth.