Vow

Nothing has challenged me more or made me prouder than marriage. And yet this is something I seldom remember or acknowledge. At a marriage course last year I was reminded of the privilege that marriage is. And yet it doesn’t get celebrated in society.  Weddings do. Weddings get a lot of press. But marriage becomes ‘institution’, ‘boredom’, ‘predictable’. We are not quick to honour it. Quicker, perhaps, to assume that one or other of a duo must be being suppressed, must feel trapped ... if they were honest!

It was so refreshing to be given permission to pat myself on the back, and to celebrate the gift that marriage is. I was invigorated to run again with more motivation into the unknown, whilst fully embracing the very well known.

 ‘Vow’ will mean different things to different people. But for me it is what I wish I had the words to express back when I said ‘I do’, to the man who knows only too well that I am still working out how to uphold these, and too often fall short. But should I reach this goal and do nothing more with my entire life but that, I know I will have accomplished something great; something that can feel rare, but when we look for it we see this all around us, being worked out in a million different ways. 

Where we land

I am aiming to be only a third of the way through my life at the time of writing this. 

And yet, as a child, I aimed to have accomplished a good 99% of my dreams by now, with the final 1% being entering heaven (which, as alluded to, can wait two thirds my life over!).

This leads me to wonder about journeys, routes and direction.

If we were to look with a bird's eye view on the map we have travelled we would see, certainly in my case anyway, a mass of spaghetti-wanderings. From the ground we’d think these were often idle, inefficient, incoherent and pointless. Yet a bird's eye view reveals that to be far from fair; the ‘off-course’ meander swept up a contact, the back-tracking found a friend, the ambling zig-zag landed a husband (!). Perhaps that backwards step met opportunity. And maybe, selfishly, we can take comfort that those steps weren’t wasted for us, as though our own stories were the prime focus.

When we return, though, again and again to seemingly the exact same spot, we must boldly lift our gaze from frustration in order to see that the scenery has in fact changed. Learning to notice this is a gift.

And courage takes us to peruse the routes that seem to have brought us nothing; that seem to have stretched us, and tested us, and tugged and pulled only to leave us just afloat, splashing and doggy-paddling for air. All this time with just enough sight to glimpse the speed boats in the distance, comfortably carrying off those headed in the direction you intended for yourself. It is here that we must remember who we ourselves have carried, who we have sacrificed for, and who we have enabled to journey themselves. We are not wasted. We are not unnoticed. We are not aimless.

I am always ready for the excitement, the ‘just around the corner’, the ‘it could all change tomorrow’ flurry that has fuelled me on this journey of creative self-employment for over a decade. Beneath this of course lies a toil that is rarely seen, a graft that "waters seeds, yet still prays for rain". But as soon as the love for the unknown goes, it is time to stop. For this choice otherwise makes no sense- living in the most expensive county I have yet come across, married to another self-employed creative, raising little people, far from wider family… On the surface these, perhaps, are not well thought through and planned decisions. But they are where my paths lead.  

They are where I find my peace.

They are each fuelling faith.

'nicolapike.com' is the resting place, the accidental stumbling, the ‘in-the-mean-time’, the ‘while-I’m-on-my-way-somewhere-else’ musings which, should I dare look down on from a height, could in fact be my greatest adventure so far. Thank you for sharing in it!