Full disclosure up front: I don't consider myself a writer. I write in the same way I golf. I enjoy it, mostly. But lets be honest: Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson are golfers; people like me who populate the courses around the country on a given Saturday are not. We are people that enjoy the sport and wish we could be better at it, but at best, our skills are limited by the physical and mental limitations that separate the truly great players from those who simply wish they were and by the importance golf has in our lives (sometimes more important than watching television and sometimes less important than grocery shopping).
The same is true for writing. Just because my wife and I now have a blog does not make us writers. We are not like Hemingway or Fitzgerald who worked on and honed their craft for years. We didn't feed our passion while starving our bodies during life only to be appreciated after death. We didn't have to rise up through the ranks of fledgling authors and fight for our place in the Writing World, so one day we could finally get our shot at being published as a two page short story in a literary magazine that only aspiring authors and publishing talent scouts read. There was no barrier to entry for this club. There was no gatekeeper barring us from publishing because of our lack of skill or dedication. We didn't earn this. We Googled it.
I don't write because I'm a writer. I write because I enjoy creating. I write because it is personally helpful for me to get my thoughts out on paper (in this case virtual paper). I write because inexplicably, I have felt God's prompting for years to do so. I don't understand it. I don't really even want it, but it is there, and it is persistent, so I write. (I find the prospect of ignoring a consistent prompting by the omnipotent creator of the universe to be terrifying.)
None of these reasons, however, are why I have agreed to start this blog with my wife. I don't know if this blog will be interesting or helpful to those who read it. I don't even know what we will end up writing about. I don't blog because I am or want to be a writer.
I blog because I love my wife.
The most vulnerable, unedited truth is that I love her from the depth of my being. I yearn for her. I want to connect with her on the most intimate of levels.
I don't feel that way all the time, or even hardly ever. Maybe you are better than me, but I don't spend my days thinking about how much I love my wife. I don't pause in the middle of my day, reading the 20th email that I don't want to answer, telling my son to stop hitting his sister, slamming on my breaks as another moron walks down the middle of the aisle in the grocery store parking lot, and think, "Right now I really yearn for my wife." But just because I am guilty of getting caught up in the busyness and chaos of life doesn't make it any less true.
Because there are moments of clarity. Be honest. If you are married, it is probably because deep down, you feel, or did feel, the same way. There is something about your spouse that you find immensely attractive. There is something you want or from them (men, insert 8th grade locker room humor here), and it is more than physical. You value your spouse. You desire her respect, her approval. You want to please him. You want to make him happy. You want to share yourself with her. And the varying degrees of pain that is ever present in your marriage is the result of not attaining these things. The rejection or betrayal or rebuffing of these desires hurts.
So, I blog because after nearly 20 years of marriage, I am not content with waiting for the intimacy lottery to cash my ticket in. I am looking for ways to connect.
I want to share more than a house with my wife. I want her to live the adventure of life with me, not just beside me. I want to be teammates and comrades and partners. I want a shared mission and experience. I don't want to come home at the end of the day and have to try and relate to her what I have done all day. I want to share that day with her. That's why I married her.
So, I blog because this is a very small step toward that end. A way to share something together. An active step into the fight to capture what it was that I was looking for nearly 20 years ago: my wife, my partner, my friend. my lover.
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