Musing on Marriage(tm) Marriage and the Remodeling Project

My husband, Steve, and I bought our home here in Wisconsin almost
exactly four and a half years ago. After nearly two years of looking
in five different states and insisting that we did not want or have
time for a `project' we excitedly bought a house that needed just
about every type of work imaginable. To give you an idea of the
extent of our new project , our house came with no kitchen
(there was an empty white box of a room designated as such but that
was it) and none of the four bathrooms was fully functional. That
was the tip of the iceberg.

Now being the pragmatic realists that we are we
not only began to tackle the kitchen and the bathrooms and the other
necessary tasks but we took on some purely aesthetic changes as
well. I want to tell you about one of those and how it relates to
this idea of marriage and pain and all those things. (And, in case
you did not get this at the time I wrote the Popcorn piece – I can
make just about anything into a piece about marriage.)

Once Upon A Time there was a Stairway. A functional and perfectly
sound Stairway that had only the flaw of Incredible Ugliness.
(Really, I'm not making that up – it was uuuuggggly) This Stairway
lived in the heart of our home going from our family room on the
lowest level to the living room on the main level and then
continuing in all its Ugly Glory up to the game room in the loft.

The Stairway was so Ugly that it turned our eyes from the projects
that needed to be done and sang a Siren Song of ripping and tearing
and dreaming. We were here less than a month when we saw The
Picture. A big beautiful glossy full color Picture of a stunning
spiral staircase. It called our names and pulled us from the warmth
of our bed in the wee hours of the night. We raced to the site of
the Ugliness, our eyes glazed over as we envisioned what It Could
Be. Spiral, winding its way sinuously up through three levels.
Beautiful.

Like all dreams of turning Ugliness into Beauty the Stairway
Project, as it came to be known, took far more effort than we could
ever have dreamed. It required at least a year and a half of
planning just the structural support that would be needed. During
that time we were consumed with researching the various spiral
staircase manufacturers and comparing each and every aspect of their
wares.

Before we could begin to create the new we needed to tear out and
remove the old. It was two more years of hard labor on everything
but the Stairway itself. Our loft became inaccessible for nearly two
years as the Old Stairway found its way in pieces onto the Funeral
Pyre of our bonfire pit. Three levels of flooring needed to be
pulled out, disposed of and then replaced. Two levels of ceiling
needed to be installed and finished. Two levels of walls needed new
sheetrock, mud and paint. One window and three structural wall
supports had to be added. And along the way were various Adventures
such as the Great Fall which pulled us off course and reminded us
that control is an illusion.
When all the prep work was done, the tiles laid, the wood floor
sealed, the balusters installed and finished at last the stair
treads themselves snaked up the center pole. After more than four
years of dreams and nightmares it all seemed rather anti-climactic.
They took less than a day to attach. Finally, on this New Year's Day
in the year 2004 of the Common Era I put the final coat of finish
and we held the official Ribbon Cutting on Jan 2.

It was only in the final week that all the years of effort came to a
cohesive whole. More than 1600 days of destruction and mess and dust
and disarray and then all at once it became a Thing of Beauty.

So what does this tale have to do with marriage? When couples come
to me with accounts of pain and neglect and incompatibility they are
like the Stairway Project. So much that needs to be done before it
will all come together. And so often, like the ripping and tearing
and dust making that we did, the steps (ha! No pun intended!) which
move a marriage from ugly and painful to beautiful and gracious seem
to be taking us away from that goal. The tasks and the building that
need to be done seem incredibly overwhelming and the work seems to
be constant without any sign of progress. And it is painful – messy
and painful. And it looks much worse before it begins to look better.

It is only when we get to the .end of the rebuilding process that we
see it all fall together in a way that appears effortless. When the
support has been laid and the decisions that lead to a mutually
wonderful lifestyle have been worked through – often with dust and
debris! – suddenly out of what seems like nowhere a marriage that is
beautiful and gracious emerges.

I am blessed to be part of the process in others' lives. It
takes courage and vision – and that is something each of us has
built into our humanness. Harness yours and see what beautiful
spirals you can create.

Keep Climbing,
Penny