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Brittany L. Bergman

Savoring motherhood, building marriage, and living simply

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Over, Under: Weaving a Strong Marriage out of Everyday Moments

Feb 14 28 Comments

When Dan and I were engaged, I silently observed married couples and learned a lot about how I didn’t want to treat him. Taking note of passive-aggressive comments, explicitly aggressive tones, eye rolling, and public shaming, I vowed to myself that I’d never try to make Dan feel stupid, that I’d show him the same kindness and gentleness I show my mom, my friends, my coworkers, strangers at the store.

Though I didn’t say these exact words aloud during my vows, this is what I meant when I said, “I promise to respect you.” I promise to be nice to you, publicly and privately.

Everyday decisions will make or break marriage. Often those decisions are as simple as responding with disdain or with tenderness and kindness. Here's one woman's honest example of how she tries and fails and tries again to infuse kindness into her marriage.

***

A few nights ago Dan and I were doing the after-work, pre-bedtime shuffle. I was cooking dinner, jumping from the computer screen to the spice cabinet, dashing from the cutting board over to the pot, stirring frantically to try to avoid burning the chicken.

Selah was yelling for more food; Riley was under my feet every time I turned around; obnoxious kid songs were playing in the background, the volume three clicks too loud. In the midst of the chaos, Dan had the nerve to ask me if I had some lip balm handy.

Do I look like I have lip balm handy?

“Yeah, there should be some in the small pocket of my purse.” Chop, chop, chop.

“Are you sure? I don’t see any in here.”

“No, not that small pocket, the other one.” Stir, stir, stir.

“I still don’t see any.”

“HERE. RIGHT HERE. I ALWAYS KEEP A SPARE RIGHT HERE ON THE COUNTER.” Sigh, stir, chop.

“I really didn’t know.” He turns back to Selah, quietly cutting more food, and I feel the weight of what I’ve done.

If Dan had spoken to me that way, implying that I was a nuisance, my spirit would have been crushed. But here’s the thing: he never does. Because even though he’s never said it, I know he made the same vow I did. I promise to be nice to you.

He’s a lot better at keeping it than I am.

***

My parents divorced when I was 22, when I believed their marriage was stronger than ever, having survived years that were too tumultuous and too rocky for me to comprehend.

In the resulting years, it was easy to blame one person—the one who walked away in the end. While I still hold one parent responsible for the final choice that caused my parents’ marriage to finally collapse, I can also see how much deeper it went than a single, out-of-the-blue choice (which, as it turns out, was not entirely out of the blue).

I’ve been married for only three years, so I am quite far from being any sort of expert, but I do know more than I did when I was single, during our engagement, or in our first year of marriage. I can see the tiniest sliver of the big picture of how arduous marriage can feel and the stress that comes with life changes, the big and the small, the positive and the painful.

From what I can tell so far, this is what it boils down to: everyday decisions make or break our marriages.

And often, those everyday decisions are as simple as whether we will respond with disdain, with words that belittle and deprecate, or whether we will respond with tenderness, respect, and kindness.

***

We’ve all heard the analogy that marriage is like a tapestry. It’s strong and taut when woven properly—difficult to pull apart, even though the threads that compose it are fragile. When the threads have integrity and are woven together with great care and skill, the result is not just a thing of strength but a thing of beauty. A piece of art. An heirloom.

Every day, our kindness weaves one thread over, under; our grace weaves another one over, under. A snarky tone yanks a thread back and unravels some progress, but a humble “I’m so sorry” gets it back on track.

Over, under. Over, under. Over, under.

Dan comes home late, and I’m exhausted from a day with Selah, and he has more work to do, and I don’t try to make him feel guilty.

Over.

Dan switches out the light bulbs and takes out the trash and cleans up the dog poop and cuts the grass without complaining.

Under.

I clean the kitchen without sighing passive-aggressively in an attempt to call attention to myself.

Over.

We decide to go out on a date, even though it’s a pain to leave Selah and money is a little tight and so are my jeans, but we go anyway.

Under.

We decide that, just for tonight, we’re not going to watch Netflix but instead we’re going to play a board game and talk and drink wine and laugh.

Over.

I kiss Dan hello before I kiss Selah, and I ask him how his day was before launching into everything that went wrong in mine. I listen with my ears and with my eyes and with my phone still tucked away in my bag.

Under.

***

Before I got married, I believed that the most beautiful kind of love is the one that spans years, has navigated storms, has survived harsh seasons. Of course I knew at a logical level that the only way to build this love is over time: it doesn’t develop on its own; it can’t be rushed. There is real life that has to be lived, nerves that will be tapped on day in and day out, a thousand tiny, everyday decisions that will pile up.

On that warm July day when we said our vows in front of friends and family, I couldn’t understand what it would feel like to walk with one person every day and how quickly I would become comfortable with married life — which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. But I also didn’t realize how quickly my comfort would come to trump courtesy.

In letting Dan see the truest me — for better or for worse, at my best or at my ugliest, the polished me or the raw me — I let myself get too comfortable at my worst.

It turns out that “letting yourself go” is about a lot more than wearing sweatpants and having dirty hair and not working out as much. I let myself go by not guarding my tongue, by slowly rescinding my promise to be nice, by letting us become adversaries instead of teammates.

I’m tempted here to tell you how much I love Dan and how most of the time our marriage is happy and we are kind to one another. This would all be true, and yet it would only be part of the story.

Because right now, I think if I put my kind words and thoughts on one side of a scale and my snarky tones and clipped words on the other side, they might come dangerously close to balancing out.

But I want a marriage that tips the scales.

I want a #marriage that tips the scales: the power of tenderness in everyday moments. Click To Tweet

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Filed Under: Marriage Tagged With: contentment, gratitude, habits, kindness, marriage, motherhood, relationships, respect, wedding

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brittanylbergman

Brittany L. Bergman
✔️ Kamala shirt ✔️ Kamala pearls ✔️ Ka ✔️ Kamala shirt
✔️ Kamala pearls
✔️ Kamala mug 
✔️ Kamala curls

It’s a great day to witness the shattering of a glass ceiling, to embrace empathy and decency, and to breathe a collective sigh of relief.

The work is only just beginning, but today, we celebrate. Congratulations, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris! 👏🏼🎉💙
What a beautiful, exhausting, festive, heartbreaki What a beautiful, exhausting, festive, heartbreaking, cozy, chaotic-but-strangely-quiet Christmas we had. ✨🎄✨

That’s a wrap for me on 2020—I’ll be off social media until sometime in January. May you be filled with peace and hope as we close this year but still wait for the close of this chapter in our history. 💜
I have faced Christmases full of grief and loss; d I have faced Christmases full of grief and loss; depression and rage; exhaustion and loneliness. But I can honestly say this is the weariest Christmas I can remember. I say that not to shine a spotlight on me, but to say that I have a feeling this might be your experience too. I’m with you.
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And so the words to my favorite Christmas hymn hit me different this year. They resonate in a place much deeper, more tender and true than ever before. I rejoice in the giggles of my meltdown-prone child. I rejoice in stolen moments alone in the dark, the room lit only by the glow of the Christmas tree. I rejoice in every video and every social media post I see of a frontline worker receiving the COVID vaccine, our ticket out of this nightmare. I rejoice in the vision that next Christmas might look more familiar than this one does. I rejoice in the hope of Christ, whose universal, creative, motherly love holds the whole universe together.
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On this Christmas Eve, I’ll leave you with this quote from Howard Thurman. I hope these words bring a slant of light to your day.
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“The symbol of Christmas—what is it? It is the rainbow arched over the roof of the sky when the clouds are heavy with foreboding. It is the cry of life in the newborn babe when, forced from its mother’s nest, it claims its right to live. It is the brooding Presence of the Eternal Spirit making crooked paths straight, rough places smooth, tired hearts refreshed, dead hopes stir with newness of life. It is the promise of tomorrow at the close of every day, the movement of life in defiance of death, and the assurance that love is sturdier than hate, that right is more confident than wrong, that good is more permanent than evil.”
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Whatever and however you celebrate at this time of year, I’m sending you all my love and peace. 💫
I found my Christmas spirit this weekend, just in I found my Christmas spirit this weekend, just in the nick of time.

I baked cookies with Selah without getting frustrated (first time ever?), took the kids on drive to see Christmas lights, and wrapped a bunch of gifts.

But here’s what I think did the trick, and please do steal this idea (because I stole it from someone else but have no idea who): Magical Movie Night™️.

On Saturday night, I stealthily placed a golden ticket under Selah’s pillow (which I printed from the internets and colored quickly with a yellow marker; good enough is good enough for Magical Movie Night!). We put Eamon to bed and got Selah ready for bed too, going through all the normal motions of brushing teeth, putting on pajamas, picking out a book. When we climbed into bed, I told her to look under her pillow.

She was confused when she found the ticket, and I told her it was for a Christmas movie night. “When?” she asked. “Right now!” I said. “What do you mean ‘right now’?” When it dawned on her that she was going to stay up past her bedtime to have a special movie night with Mommy and Daddy (sans Eamon), she lost her mind with excitement.

Bonus: Gramma was waiting downstairs with a bag of popcorn and Swedish Fish!

We snuggled under blankets, turned on Elf, and laughed our festive butts off. (This was her first time watching Elf, and it felt like the dawning of a new era. It’s such a big kid movie! And she loved it! Hold me. 😭)

Deck the halls, bring on Christmas, fill my mug with holly jolly goodness. 

I also acknowledge this has been a crappy year in so many ways, and I know many of you are not going to be able to access Christmas cheer this year. That’s okay. The real spirit of Christmas is light breaking through the dark, love making a way, and the beauty that can’t help seeping through the dirty, messy, horribly human moments of our lives. So you’re covered.

(And if you want to fake it ’til you make it, give Magical Movie Night a try. It’s the actual easiest.)
In which I couldn’t come up with a clever captio In which I couldn’t come up with a clever caption. There are signs of life but my brain is dead. 💀
“This is what I find most mystifying about Adven “This is what I find most mystifying about Advent: the period of waiting ultimately ends in great joy, but we can’t get to that great joy without intense, active, unbearable pain. In Advent we sense the mingling of anticipation and anxiety, excitement and disappointment, joy and pain, hope and fear.
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“On this side of history, we have the luxury of waiting with great hope, great joy, and great expectation. We know Jesus will be born, we know he will save us and redeem us, we know he will die and rise again, and we know he will set all things right one day.
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“But before Christ came, Advent was dark. It was lonely and unknown, as the Israelites waited in faith to hear from God, and all they got was… nothing. Silence.
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“Isn’t this more characteristic of the waiting we usually do? The waiting seasons of our lives are less often marked by joy and hope and more often marked by pain and fear. They are not often cozy or comforting but difficult and dark and even laborious.
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“We wait as a pregnant mother waits for her child to be born—there’s a vision of the joy to come, to be sure, but in the throes of gut-wrenching labor pains, we think we might actually die before we see that joy fulfilled. After a long season of pregnancy, when the fullness of time has arrived, the advent of labor ushers in the real period of waiting—and it is active and painful and raw.”
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// From “In the Fullness of Time,” a new blog post on @first15. There’s a link in my bio to the whole piece, with thoughts on pregnancy, Advent, and waiting well in an exceptionally hard year. 💜 Thank you so much to @first15 for publishing this post!
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Brittany L Bergman is a for-profit blog. Any company that I collaborate with is chosen by me and fits the theme and readership of my blog. At times, posts may contain affiliate links or sponsored content, which is never at any charge to you.

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