More Than Butterflies ~ A Month of Love and Marriage with Guest Courtney Walsh

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With the month of February around us those who are single look toward loving and marriage and those you who are already married just look at us singles and smile, while shaking your heads. ;-) I didn't want to just focus on love, but also on marriage the joys and trials and the wisdom that can be shared from those before us. I know I think a lot about falling in love, but not a lot about what happens afterwards. What wisdom can be shared with those like me? I've asked Courtney Walsh, accomplished author, wife and mother, to be my third guest this month in a month long series. When I read her post for the first time yesterday I knew there was an exact reason why I asked her to post--this post will surely bless you as well, married or single! Leave a comment below to enter to win your choice of any of the (released and yet to be released) in the A Year of Weddings Novellas collection.

Butterflies. That’s what you think you want. You want to be swept off your feet, the way the girls are in romance novels or chick flicks. Swept so far off their feet, they can’t stand up straight. Gushing. Googly-eyed. That’s what you’re holding out for, right?

Aren't Courtney and her husband cute??

And you actually think you’ve found it. You drive to work imagining the ring on your finger. You try on his last name with yours. It sounds a little strange, but who cares, you’ll get used to it. You just can’t wait to be his wife.

So you plan the whirlwind, fairytale wedding. You invite 300 of your closest friends.

Days then months then years pass. You have babies—three of them—and see a new side of that man you married. The Daddy. And you’re in awe once again.

Then a storm comes. And another. And you ask God if this was really what he had for you and he answers you a strong and solid, “yes.” And you know that while it feels like your world is going to fall apart, you have the choice to cling to each other and whether this storm and every storm after it. Because that’s what you’ve vowed to do.

And at some point, he takes your hand and your stomach doesn’t flutter. He brushes a stray hair away from your face and you exhale a flustered breath, hardly noticing. You catch him watching you from across the room, and you cross your eyes to make him smile. There’s no tumbling of emotions, no tingling of extremities. You’re comfortable. Cozy. Easy. Home.

Suddenly, you realize that romance has taken on a different meaning. You still swoon when Mr. Darcy professes his love to Elizabeth Bennett, don’t get me wrong, but romance, the kind that matters, has less to do with cartwheels in your belly and more to do with little things you often take for granted.

Don't Courtney's kids look like bundles of fun?!

He takes the garbage out. He brings you Dr. Pepper just because you had a rough day. He reads Calvin & Hobbes with your middle son, the one who doesn’t love reading. They giggle…a lot. He sends you text messages that say “I think you’re pretty.” He unclogs the toilet. He changes all the light bulbs. He sits on the phone with insurance companies for two hours, banging his head into the receiver because he knows it will frustrate you. He moves all the furniture in your living room. Then moves it back when you realize you liked it better the other way. He loves you in all the little ways that matter.

And he doesn’t bring you flowers because you don’t particularly like them, but he shovels the snow and makes you wait for his arm before you step out into icy streets. He provides and protects and he redefines what you thought love was in the first place.

In all your naïve wanderings, in all your youthful ignorance, you assumed you knew what marriage would look like. And yet, here you are, fourteen years later, still figuring it out. It’s not flashy or windswept, though there are moments when he can still stop your heart with a single look. Because in that look you know he’s actually seeing you. The you you thought you could keep hidden, the one that has an ugly side. A messy side. A self-doubting side.

And somehow, he makes it clear that he loves them all. 

The lovely and talented
author, Courtney Walsh!

So, maybe on paper it doesn’t look like a grand romance, but marriage is so much more than butterflies.

It’s truly for better or for worse. Till death do us part.

And yes, it’s all so worth it.