This week’s post is five days late. It is also not what I wanted to post about. But it is 06:34am, I just had a drawn out argument with my husband, and I am on night shift schedule so I am not asleep. I had thought of leaving the house to work out my emotions with a workout, but the roads are covered in a few feet of fresh, unploughed snow. I was attempting to study, but I have been staring at the same question for twenty five minutes, so I decided maybe this would be better.

My initial post was to be about the books my husband and I read in 2025. This year I enlisted my family into three separate challenges: Read one to two books every quarter (we are starting slow), read the Bible in a year, and be consistent with workouts. So far I am personally struggling with the Bible reading. My husband and I read over seventy books between the two of us last year, and I wanted to see how far we could go this year. As for working out, I both attempting to increase my weights and stamina, and also make some improvements in my diet.

I know anyone who read the first paragraph would like me to delve a bit more into the argument between my husband and myself. We cannot help it-we thirst for spice, for tea, for information. The simple fact is we are a newly married couple facing the challenges of living together for the first time. I read somewhere that most marriages fail in their first five years. I used to think that was a joke, but I think I see how easy it could be to let go in these early years. The foundation, however solid, needs work these first few years. For my husband and I, who are experiencing sharing the same space full time for the first time in our three years together, many things have to be learned and unlearned, by both of us.

As the oldest child of divorced parents, I entered my marriage with the very real knowledge that the baggage of my parents union could place some very negative weight on mine. I carried with me a significant amount of anxiety. I want to have the opposite of my parents’ relationship. I am a person who’s inherent defense mechanism is to find flaws-in objects, in processes, in others, and most of all, in myself. Not to critique or criticize, but to fix. I like to be three steps ahead, and have multiple backup plans to ensure success. The problem with that is not everything is a flaw, not every flaw needs fixing, and the constant hyperawareness for any and every wrong thing leaves me and those closest to me emotionally exhausted.

I have never been more grateful for anything than I was for the husband God sent me. When I first met my husband, I explained my entire life, my family dynamics, my situation as a military person and the many unknowns that were looming in my future as a result, and my own existential crises. I told him to make sure he wanted to be saddled with all of it because I wanted to be with someone who was flexible enough to accommodate all of these. My husband responded to me with four words: “We’ll figure it out.” Never have I met anyone so calm, so controlled, never has anyone brought me this much peace. I say this, even after today’s argument, nothing brings me more peace than holding his hand, or knowing he is in the other room.

Our argument today happened because we are in a strange point in our lives, we are in transition, in a period where everything seems uncertain. We have been attempting to purchase a home since we moved to Pennsylvania. We have been trying to start a family. We both have new jobs, and are still figuring out how to find time for ourselves in the midst of our schedules and all these changes. Some days, we get it right. Other days, things go terribly wrong.

One of the reasons I married my husband was because of how he approached conversation. The way he listened to me. The way he took in the things I said, and made real efforts to understand. That is not something I was raised around, and it was a dealbreaker in every relationship I entered. I needed to have a voice, I needed to feel safe in my home, and every day, in his own beautiful, flawed, human way, he has given me that, and so much more.

It should be easy, then, should it not? When you have the love of your life and the relationship you dreamed of for yourself. How can some days be still this hard? Sometimes I hear my aunties say “If you divorce this man we will know it is your fault,” or “He is perfect. Anything happening over there is you.” I have brushed those comments off, because I truly believe my husband is an answer to a long, painful prayer, one I prayed for myself, and one I know my mother prayed every night for me. But these statements belie the real everyday struggle happening in marriages, especially new ones. My husband and I are navigating a number of emotional journeys in our lives at this time and sometimes we are not necessarily in the same boat. Some days, like today, things just seem really off.

“We’ll figure it out.”

Those four words my husband spoke to me when we first met have carried us through a two-hour, then five-hour, then cross-country long distance relationship. It carried us through missed flights, twenty four hour weekend meetups every two to three months, two residency application cycles and one transitional year, and through every hope of progressing as a family that ended in disappointment. We are young, we are barely starting out, we are figuring this married life thing out. Moments like these will happen, but we will come out on the other side.

The paragraph below is part of my journal entry from three days ago, after a particularly frustrating day with health insurance and doctors’ offices. It was a reminder of things I was grateful for, and I share it to remind myself that no matter what, this too, shall pass:

• Residency is hard.
• America (Trump’s America) is a festering cesspool that only conjures frustration (this was in response to the killing of Renee Good by the ICE agents and the ensuing protests in Minneapolis, which as on today, has claimed the life of another person, Alex Pretti, a 37-year old ICU Nurse)
• The American Healthcare system is broken-sometimes I wonder what the point of all this work is
• I got my period. Again.

HOWEVER:

• My husband is a treasure from Heaven
• I am a Doctor. I am a Captain. I am a Badass.
• I am training to be a Surgeon.
• I love my job
• I have the best family

As the oldest daughter of a union that did not work out, I carry many anxieties about my own marriage, one of which is the fear that in attempting to correct the mistakes of my parents’ failed marriage, I may swing the pendulum too far in the other direction, with the same unfortunate result. I am grateful for my husband, my partner, who gives me space to be frustrated, angry, and tired. I am thankful to the man who looked at me and said I was worth the effort. I am thankful for a life partner, someone to wade through the murky waters with. I am grateful for a home, a heart who loves me. I am grateful for peace.