Marriage is a hard thing. It’s nothing to enter lightly. But it’s also something that doesn’t get easier. It’s not like a light goes off in your head and you know that this is it. It’s a commitment to stick with somebody and work things out. Some people think that there is one chosen person out there for each of us to marry (assuming it’s in the scheme of your life to get married, which is not a valid assumption). I’m not so sure about that. I think it’s more a matter of really working and trying to live with somebody. Marriage takes a lot of effort, and you can’t sit on your hands hoping that this is the one. You have to put forth the effort to make sure they stay the one. You’ve got to make the relationship happen. Obviously you don’t do that with any random stranger, you’ve got to have a deep friendship there. But there will be times when you can’t stand each other. Doubts will crowd your mind and you’ll wonder what you’re doing. And that’s when you stick it out. That’s marriage.

I don’t mean to harp on my friends. They’re unsure of what they’re doing and they’ve decided to hold off. That’s a smart thing to do. It’s also a very difficult thing to suddenly throw so many plans into the air. The chances of everything falling back into place again are slim. You’ve got even more work to do to keep things together. And I don’t just mean the relationship, I mean your sanity. That’s a blow to your sense of self, and regardless of where the relationship stands, you need some love. And sometimes in the midst of life, that’s hard to find. I hope against hope that they’re able to find it.

How you read that line says a lot about how old you are. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions.

So I’ve been married for a year. Now I’m all wise and knowledgeable in the ways of holy matrimony. Have I learned anything in the past year? Yeah. Marriage is hard. It’s not all lovey-dovey and swelling romance like you feel when you pop the question. Most of it is mundane: Grocery shopping together, being tired and cranky together, foraging for something to eat together. When you’re dating or engaged all of those things seem so exciting and wonderful. You only do them together occasionally and it makes the mundane special. But when you do those things all the time it becomes part of normal life and running to the grocery store becomes a chore again.

A bit of the magic disappears when you live together. You find out what’s like after you hang up the phone or go home at night. Before you could hang up the phone and go back to your own little world. But marriage is all about sharing a little world together. You have to put up with one another no matter what.

That’s a lot harder than you think. At first it’s easy, but then things start to get touchy. It can go downhill from there, if you’re not careful. You have to remember a few things about the kind of commitment you made, and the kind of love you’re supposed to have. I always have to remind myself that the world doesn’t revolve around me, that sometimes other things are more important, that sometimes I have to let things go. Sometimes you have to sacrifice. And sometimes you have to sacrifice a lot. That’s what makes a marriage work. It’s communication. It’s working together. It’s learning when and how to be apart. It’s self-sacrificing and others-focused. That’s probably why most marriages don’t work today–most of us don’t know anything other than self-centeredness.

I guess that’s what I’ve learned this past year. I make it sound like a pretty rough year, and now my mom’s probably all upset and worried and I’ll get a phone call later tonight. But it’s not really that way, those are just the occasional hard parts. The times that make you want to throw up your hands and walk out the door before you say something you regret. But it’s not always like that. There’s the times when you hold one another close and let the day drift away. There’s the times when you just float around, not really caring what you do as long as you’re together. There’s the times when you wash the dishes together and you can hardly resist the temptation to soap her nose. There’s the times when you need one another, and you can feel that need deep inside, and you know you’d go to any length, put up with any crabbiness or ill-tempered attitude to have one another.

Marriage. Marriage is what brings some of us together today.

I think it’s a brilliant plan. Yet what am I doing? Christmas shopping for my wife. Alas. I should have implemented this plan a while ago.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that nothing will happen simply by you intending it to happen. I’ve intended for my office to be cleaned up for five months now, and it’s yet to actually stay clean. Sure, it’s been picked up for a few days when the relatives were visiting, but it immediately returned to its former, unsightly state.

The lesson there is that you have to be intentional about what you do. That’s not really specific to marriage, but it seems more obvious now that I’m married. A lot of things become more obvious after you’re married. But being intentional is also helpful to your marriage. You can intend all you want to buy your wife flowers, but good intentions don’t score any points (and that’s just an expression, we all know that scoring points is not the purpose of flower buying–it’s trying to out-do the other guys).

Probably the most important thing I’ve learned about marriage is that it’s not glamorous. Before you get married you think it will be. But that’s because you always had the opportunity to get away from your loved one when they were at their worst. When you’re married, you rarely have that opportunity. Before you get married you have to go to separate homes at the end of the night (or the early morning, depending on how late you stay up). This separation introduces a sense of longing that immediately makes things more romantic and glamorous. When you’re married you just climb into the same bed and click the light off. Then your wife has to listen to you snore, grind your teeth, and then fight you for the covers. It’s not surprising that the romance seems to wear off pretty quickly.

Once a friend of mine said he was learning how to better serve his wife. Then it hit me. That’s what marriage is. Service. You’re supposed to put your spouse’s interests ahead of yours and serve them. That is unbelievably hard to do. When I come home after work I want to crash on the couch and watch The Simpsons and I want supper to be ready. But if I’m serving my wife, I should come home from work and make supper for her. There’s got to be some give and take. Which is really hard to do after eight hours of work when you just want to crash.

Marriage isn’t easy. That’s the one thing I’ve learned. You can’t just kiss and make up and hope it’s all okay. Sometimes you have to slam the door and angrily do the grocery shopping by yourself and come home and work through some difficulties. It’s called a fight, and only normal, healthy relationships have them. If you’re don’t ever fight, you’re in for some serious trouble.

Am I meaning to be depressing? Is this a plea for help that my marriage is going down the tubes? Absolutely not. I love my wife. It’s just it’s not all flowers and sex and disgustingly cute couples. Marriage is also about scrubbing toilets and paying bills and deciding who’s going to cook dinner.

Another fun thing about being married is the inordinate amount of shopping you have to do. It probably doesn’t help that both of us lived in dorms before being married. We’ve spent the last three days shopping, and quite frankly, I never knew you could spend that much at Target. The worst part is we’re still not done. But thankfully someone invented the wedding gift–which most often comes in the form of cash. Which just so happens to be the biggest incentive for not eloping. And if you’re not concerned with outfitting your new home or apartment, by all means elope!

It’s a small ring, size 4–it doesn’t even fit on my pinky, with a pebble sized diamond in the middle and smaller diamonds on the side. It was cast in 14 karat white gold, accented with bits of yellow gold. It wasn’t a two month’s salary ring. With my salary it’d be closer to a ten month’s salary ring. But that’s my salary.

So behind my laundry day reserve sits a ring, waiting. What it’s waiting for I’m not really sure. I’ve always had this idea in my mind that before taking such a giant step as marriage, I’d be sure to satisfy all questions, calm all fears, assuage all doubts. Somehow, before pulling the ring from the underwear drawer and popping the question I’d be able to answer all the questions and know without a doubt that I had the perfect soul mate.

There were all these people I wanted to talk to. Wise counselors who could somehow peer into my soul and tell me if I was making the right choice. They would dispense wise advice, and I’d walk away feeling like a man, my questions answered, ready for adulthood. Ready to be a husband. But when do you stop being a boy and become a man? When are you able/ready to become a husband? And what if I still feel like a kid?

And I did talk to some wise gurus. I listened to them, and felt the pain of the mistakes they made. But I didn’t walk away feeling enlightened. I didn’t walk away without questions, doubts, fears.

When I bought the ring I still had questions, doubts, fears. I woke up early and drove to the jewelry store like a man in a dream. I watched myself drive there. I saw myself get out and walk into the store. I saw myself buy the ring with my Visa card. I watched the whole thing like a movie, never feeling like the actor or even the director. I was a viewer. I bought the ring knowing it wouldn’t be in my possession for two weeks. They had to size it and ship it. I still had time to answer.

The ring arrived and I stashed it in my book bag, ignoring its presence. It was like I was carrying a bomb. Safely in my room, I tore into the box. I pulled at the packaging for five minutes before pulling out a razor blade. I hacked through the box and began pulling out bits and pieces of the Wall Street Journal, and finally the black speckled box. I opened it slowly and carefully. When I finally peered inside the clam, there was the pearl. A light didn’t shine down from heaven and music didn’t start playing. The ring needed a polish. I starred at it for a moment, wondering if it was for real. The phone rang suddenly, jarring me back to reality. I fumbled with the phone and spoke slowly, carefully.

Before burying the treasure beneath my boxers in the drawer, I looked it over, wondering how something so small could be worth what I paid for it. For all I knew it was gold plated lead with a cubit zirconium. I knew nothing about jewelry. I didn’t even know how big the diamond was. All I knew was that she liked it.

I quickly buried the ring and tried to forget about it. Late that night after I shut off my computer and before I climbed into bed I told my roommate. Well, I got it. Got what? The ring. A slow smile spread across his face. He asked when I was going to ask her, and I realized I couldn’t let it sit in my drawer forever.

I’m beginning to understand that my questions won’t be answered. My fears and doubts will remain until the day I die. I’ll be no more sure today than on the day I say ‘I do.’ You see, it’s not about having all the right answers. It’s not about erasing doubts and relieving fears. Because that day will never come.

It’s much more than that. It’s a vow to love for a lifetime. Not just to love through the morning breath and the pms, but to love the morning breath and the pms. My fears, apprehensions, and questions will never be answered because love doesn’t work on solid answers. Love demands risk. The risk that she’ll still love me when I slam the door. The risk that I’ll still love her when she forgets to pay the Visa bill.

Love does not come with easy answers. Love is an action, a commitment two people make and reestablish every morning when the alarm goes off and they fight for the bathroom. It’s not a question of having all the right answers, it’s a question of being ready to accept that daily challenge.

I will take her to be my wife, to have and to hold, from that day forward, for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health until death do us part.

And that moment when death comes, then and only then will my questions be answered, my doubts dispelled and my fears relieved. Until then, it’s up to me–it’s up to us–to daily face those questions, doubts, and fears; to daily prove our love.

I open the drawer, reach deep inside, and there it is.

She said yes.