As I drove home on this snowy Thursday, one of the memorable sights was of a booth off Rush Road, covered with snow, selling roses and beautiful bouquets for Valentine’s Day.
It was an apt image.
A lifetime love certainly will encounter its share of storms — ice threatening to crush the flowers of affection.
For many reasons, relationships and marriages hit chilly times. The petals fall from the roses. Love grows cold. Eyes roam. People follow wayward paths and go astray.
I thought of these things as I crept down slippery back roads, detouring past hills, focused always on finding a way back to my warm home and the wife of my youth. I gave thanks, as I do every day, for the blessings of a marriage where we both prioritize renewing our commitment. Whatever comes to throw us off kilter, we return to a balance based on respect, affection and enjoyment of each other.
I encountered a news story recently about a marriage that returned to its equilibrium over decades, not days. This marriage literally came back from the dead.
Mitchell and Caryn Fonberg were married in 1996. They had two children and the stresses of life led them to divorce in 2010.
The news story describes the difficulties that hit their initially happy marriage after they had two children, both worked, and their visions of a simple, happy life together hit speed bumps.
They felt overwhelmed. Their relationship changed. They had trouble communicating with each other as their expectations and assumptions weren’t met.
“I just thought she knew what she was doing. She thought I knew what I was doing,” Mitchell said. “But neither of us knew what we were doing.”
They were exhausted and lacked the experience or maturity to appreciate life from the other person’s perspective. Resentments hardened in a self-reinforcing downward cycle.
In 2020 they lived states apart, but during the Covid-19 pandemic all four ended up cohabitating, hunkering down in Mitchell’s Dallas home with their kids, by then college-aged.
“Amid family viewings of “The Bachelor,” shared dinners and nights spent chatting over the firepit — and years removed from the simmering resentments that had caused their split — Mitchell and Caryn remembered the admiration and glee that compelled them to choose each other in the first place,” Rachel Kurzius wrote in The Washington Post.
Reading their story, I think of so many marriages I know that have broken down over the years. It’s impossible to know what happens behind closed doors. Every one had its own reasons, its own issues, its own problems, its own efforts to fix them that failed.
And so as we mark another Valentine’s Day, with roses in the snow, I want to share hope with all the couples out there feeling like there’s ice on the petals.
The story of how the Fonbergs rebuilt their friendship and relationship during the slow pace of the Covid lockdown is worth reading and remembering.
If your marriage is on the rocks, or if it’s “fine” but chilly, or if it’s great but you want take it to new levels, I’d invite you to an event being hosted next weekend at my church.
This marriage conference at Bethel Church near exit 72, runs Friday and Saturday, Feb. 21 and 22. It aims to provide encouragement and tools to dig down deep and build (or keep building) your marriage on a strong foundation.
There will be sessions focused on couples in different stages of life, including groups about finances, helping couples work together as a team, sessions for couples with young children or who are in blended families, and the session that my wife and I are looking forward to attending: “navigating the rapids together.”
The cost of the two-day seminar, including dinner (with child care provided!) is only $30. Our church can help if that cost is an impediment. We believe that marriage is worth investing in.
Life is hard. The connection with your spouse isn’t always perfect. Chill winds blow. But amid the difficulties, there is the opportunity to choose warmth.
I’m inspired by the words of Caryn Fosberg when her ex-husband got down on his knee to propose to her again: “I feel so grateful that I found him and that we’ve chosen each other.”
Brian Mittge has written for The Chronicle for a quarter-century. He can be reached at brianmittge@hotmail.com.
