Making it Work

I was at the lingerie shower/girls weekend of a dear college friend this weekend. She is a pharmicist (with a pharmacist schedule which gives her several days off every 2 weeks but also requires she works long days and work every other weekend) and her soon to be hubby is a resident (so his schedule changes monthly and he has months with virtually no days off, months where he works nights, months where he is on call alot, etc.) Additionally, they both had some family issues during their 2 year courtship and engagement.

They started a relationship in not so great circumstances.  Its not like they were already in love and then the busy, different schedules, she works all day, he works all night started happening. It happened from the get go. No honeymoon phase. They had to work from day one just to get to know eachother.

We were talking about their upcoming wedding and how they met (through her brother in law and sister) and I said, "What I want to know is how y'all ever got to the point of marriage considering you have had different schedules since the beginning!"

And what she said is so true...it was something along the lines of, "we just decided to make it work."

Isn't that so true? when you know that the other person is right, you will work through a lot of bad stuff to make it work.  I know for a fact that they would often meet for breakfast after his night shift and before her afternoon shift. They made it work. And ironically enough, now that they can finally live together (well, after April 14th.....), they will finally see MORE of eachother than before.  Even if its just a few hours between different shifts, they can see eachother a lot more.  All that work has paid off --- and will pay off even more when he finishes residency.

It made me think of relationships I had that didn't work. Sometimes it was because one or the other of us did not want to make it work.  Thats not always a bad thing. I know of one guy in particular who I am still friends with but neither of us was willing to compromise on what we wanted which may have been partly because we were stubburn, but it was in large part because we weren't right for eachother.  Why work so hard for something that wasn't meant to be longterm?

It's kindof a measuring stick.... when the circumstances are hard, am I willing to work hard to make it work? If I am not, then it might be because this is not the right guy.  Because when the guy has been the type of guy for me, I have worked.  I'm sure that the difficulty in arranging time together made my friend and her then boyfriend realize really quickly how serious they were about eachother.

And, you know what?? Deciding to do what it takes to make it work because you love someone is good practice for the future...because marriage is guaranteed to be difficult.  However, these two have already laid a foundation of doing what it takes to make it work and making it through difficult circumstances together.

So, yes, their story did not begin as a fairy tale per se....unless you've read a fairy tale that involves two people pulling out their calenders to schedule time together.  There was no meeting, falling in love and then spending every blissful waking minute together....But this story will have several chapters, the kinds with ups and downs, and two characters who face life's problems together -- a much better read than a cheesy fairy tale :) The kind of book you can't put down.

And for all those boys that either I couldn't make it work with or they couldn't make it worth with me, even for all the pain, that's good. Because I want someone who works as hard to make it work as these two did.  Totally worth the wait (I am pretty certain she would say he was worth the wait too !!)