Even after being back a week, it’s hard to put words around our Bahamas trip. I keep coming up short. We went with 7 couples who we love and who love us. We traveled together, we ate together, and we played bocce together. It was so fun, and it was so much more.
Most nights, we sat around a table and we shared, asked questions, guided conversations to charter the depths of joy and struggle that each marriage at the table endeavors. I got to know them all so well, and I also got to know we aren’t alone. The trip wasn’t just drinking alongside each other, and it wasn’t just slipping past one another in the kitchen. It was a collective movement towards something– something deeper, something richer, something together. This is the real stuff, the we’re-in-this-with-you stuff.
When Chris and I got married, we had some dear friends read a short excerpt from Wendell Berry, where he says, in short*:
…here, at the very heart of community life, we find not something to sell as in the public market, but this momentous giving [marriage]. If the community cannot protect this giving, it can protect nothing– and our time is proving that this is so.
So just as the fruit of marriage is not only for myself and my spouse, the commitment I have towards preserving and cherishing this marriage is not exclusive. My vows are upheld and supported through the love and commitment of our community.
All those friends on that trip, and the many friends and family we have across this great state, are equally as invested in protecting “our giving,” and us for them. And for that, we are indelibly, humbly, speechlessly, grateful.
*I would highly recommend reading the entire essay, “Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community.” I will share my book with you, I will read it aloud to you, whatever, if it means you’ll read it. It’s that good.
So thankful you put our time into such beautiful words. xo