Unlike most other parents, I don’t dread the beginning of the school year because of the kid-related stress (though it definitely contributes to the anxiety of early fall). Instead, as the wife of a school principal, I dread the inevitable hours I will spend bearing the domestic and mental labor to care for our family. From back-to-school bashes and school board meetings, to fall sports games and parent-teacher conferences, my husband’s calendar gets filled with caring for the students and teachers while I have to care for everything else.
This is nothing new for our family. Both my husband and I are in caring professions, which are demanding of our time as well as our emotional and mental energy. I travel frequently for work, and we are constantly negotiating what needs to be prioritized at any given moment. We are also blessed to have our families within a few miles, who help us whenever we ask. We are both beyond privileged to be able to do what we love while running a household with four children.
But I also must admit that as we get further into each autumn—when I am knee deep in the 12th load of laundry, looking for the left kneepad for my son’s volleyball practice, throwing a frozen pizza in the oven, making sure to pick up everyone’s prescription refills from the pharmacy, and my husband is slated to arrive home at 10 p.m.—my resentment about doing it all alone tends to outweigh my excitement at seeing him walk through the door. (I would imagine he feels much the same way while solo parenting on day five of my business trips as I post pictures of mountains on Instagram.)
In the draining seasons of marriage, it can be hard to connect with the fizzy, frothy feelings that we first experienced when we fell in love. Affection feels rote. Finding energy, let alone time, to connect emotionally seems like solving complex calculus equations.
Yet, it’s also in these seasons when I know I must lean into my vows most. It’s when I most need to pray and care for myself as well as my spouse because it is when God’s grace will have to supply what emotions simply cannot. I need to be the woman I promised to be before the altar, who vowed to love and honor my husband all the days of my life, not simply the easy ones.
The thing I ask God most for is the courage to be honest and communicate my needs. As a woman, I have been culturally conditioned to take on the vast majority of the mental load in my family. The world expects women who work to still manage the domestic labor, from the visible work like dishes and scrubbing bathrooms, to the unseen tasks like remembering medical histories and arranging child care and transportation. While my own household may be more egalitarian, the societal pressure to be the perfect mother adds to the discontent I feel when I have to take up a higher percentage of the division of labor in those busy months. When I try to give and give silently, it eats away at my spirit and affects everyone around me, especially my family.
That is why my next prayer is always to ask the Spirit to help me to view my spouse through God’s eyes. As much as I love my husband, I am human, imperfect and sometimes self-centered. And I cannot always see beyond my own hurt. In remembering how beloved my husband is by God, I can move beyond my resentment and selfishness to see the eternal reality beyond.
Marriage is a sacrament of God’s love and, if I want my marriage to be an effective sign for others, I must make room for God’s grace. It doesn’t mean I opt out of the daily work of a relationship or that I have to bear every burden until I burn out. But, like all sacraments, marriage requires our cooperation with God’s grace to bear the most fruit in our lives. I invite the Lord into the trying times so Christ might help me to continue to live out my wedding vows and be an instrument of love to my family and all those we impact each day.
Like every season, the fall back-to-school frenzy will inevitably pass. We’ll settle into the school year and regain our equilibrium at home. Winter will come, then spring, and we’ll fly through the busyness of each season in its time. What will matter, what will strengthen our marriage and be the test of how deeply God’s grace has penetrated our hearts, will be the moments of choosing to love and honor each other in spite of the stress. It will be choosing to reach out in love for each other, rather than withdraw to nurse our wounds. It will be the days of imitating Christ and dying to self so others might flourish.
That is the stuff of a great love story. Mundane as such a story may seem, I hope and pray it will be the one we are writing in our home.
This article also appears in the September 2024 issue of U.S. Catholic (Vol. 89, No. 9, pages 43-44). Click here to subscribe to the magazine.
Image: iStock/borchee
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