4 Years: The Limits of Your Experience

“You fail at the limits of your experience.” As a coach, this is a motto I use to train both myself and athletes in any sport. Simply said, if you've never experienced the worst in your training, how will you respond in competition when you’re tested? The same motto goes for testing our resilience during struggles in life. The more you've been through, the more you can handle. But how can you handle something like a double lung transplant less than a year into your marriage? Or multiple hospitalizations for complications during the first year of recovery? How do you face hell? In this case, you have to rely on something outside of yourself.

Rachel and I will celebrate 5 years of marriage this July 10^th. I know that doesn't seem like a long time to be married and be giving marriage advice, but when you consider the divorce rate among young couples in the first 5 years (20%) and maybe .001% of those had to deal with transplant due to a terminal illness, I’d say we’re off to a good start. I hide notes around the house for her every morning before I leave for work, I’m excited to come home to her every evening, and I would rather spend a night in with her watching Netflix than being out with anyone else. Rachel cooks amazing dinners for us every night that we eat together, she texts me little updates throughout the day, and she’s the first person to take my side when I come home frustrated about something. There are a million of those little things that make me realize how amazing it is to be best friends with my wife. Blech, too corny, right? I know, because when I say things like this, people occasionally roll their eyes and say, “Yeah, but you all are different.” As if the only reason we’re so close is because we went through the transplant 4 years ago after suffering together through CF for 3 years before that, and Rachel going through hell for the first 24 years of her life. But what people fail to see is that although we've had our relationship tested with this illness, we’re also tested everyday with the fact that WE’RE A MARRIED COUPLE. We have the same disagreements, financial issues (transplants aren't cheap, people), worries about the future, job struggles, family emergencies, and differences in personalities that every other couple has. When you have something like a transplant in the first year of your marriage, you kind of skip the honeymoon phase and go straight into the “life” part of marriage. Many of the challenges of marriage only showed up after the transplant and subsequent complications. And yes, having faced death made them seem less important and easier to deal with, but at the same time, they’re still challenges that break many marriages that didn't start the way ours did. So on one hand, the limits of our relationship experience were pushed because of the transplant, but we still had not experienced the specificity of everyday marriage issues until afterwards.

     

As we edge towards the limits of our experience, the inevitability of failure arises. But as I always tell my athletes as they reach those limits, “Failure may be an option, but quitting is not.” When faced with the news that Rachel needed a transplant, it broke us down. But we didn't quit. The transplant pushed that boundary forward, and it broke us too. But we didn't quit. New boundaries were tested as we began a more “normal” married life, and we face each challenge together as a couple, but many times it breaks us too. But we do not quit. It’s our faith in God and the foundation of our marriage based in an unbreakable vow between husband, wife, and Christ that allows us get back up after failing at the limits of our experience. We would fail at these limits or quit when we do fail if our strength was our own. It’s our firm grasp to a strength outside of us that is our strength inside our marriage. I have all of my athletes build a strong foundation of physical strength in order to be able to face the unknown and unknowable in their sport. In our marriage, our bond in Christ is that foundation of strength that allows us to face the unknown and unknowable in our life together.

So yes, we are different because of what we've been through, but we’re also just like you. And none of this is to say it’s product of any of our own power - in fact it’s the opposite. Christ alone is the reason we’ve thrived over these past 4 years after the transplant. I thank God for every second he’s given me with Rachel and for every struggle He’s brought us though along with way.

Happy 4^th Lungaversary, Sweetheart.