Al and Tipper Gore - Musings from a New Bride

Yesterday my beloved sent me a text asking me if I had seen the news on twitter - Al and Tipper Gore were getting a divorce.

Folks mused,

"Who gets the internet?"

"Who would have thought that Bill and Hillary would last longer."

"I am so upset."

As someone who is just entering this bond called marriage for the first time in her life and as an abashed fan of the Al and Tipper romance, I too was sent reeling by the news.  

A few takeaways for me were as follows:  

1- No one ever knows what is truly going on between a couple except for the couple. 

2- Marriage is not a cake walk - even after, or perhaps especially not after 40 years.

3- Anything can happen along the journey, no matter who you are.

I don't know why Al and Tipper decided to call it quits after forty years.  

I do know that for many of us the news was particularly devastating because in this modern age where few marriages last theirs "seemed" like one that was working despite of their great political success and that gave the rest of us hope.  

Now we are left to our own devices and left to fend for our partnerships on our own.  

I still plan on getting  married overseas in a few months.  

I am doing so with eyes wide open.  I happen to be marrying a great man who is kind, generous, patient and incredibly loving but even so we still have our ups and our downs.  (We are after all human.)  I am hopeful that our marriage will last more than forty years, to the end of our lives where we both get to swing on the porch as old people holding hands; and though anything can happen along that journey, no matter who we choose to be I am hopeful that we are able to make it through, despite the odds, unscathed.  

Marriage is not a cake walk- that we both know well but I am hopeful that we are able to make it through as a couple.

As for Al and Tipper, I wish them all the best and much happiness.  Thank you for being a role model for us for so many years and thank you for having the courage to do what you both thought was best.

Love, Marriage and Choice

Soon I will be a married woman.  I am engaged to the most wonderful man, as they say in Spanish mi media naranja and I feel incredibly blessed.  In him I have found a partnership like no other.  He compliments my weaknesses and affirms my strengths.  Over the time that we have dated he has forgiven my human imperfections and the fobiles of my character and by his side I have grown immensely as a human being, a world citizen, a woman and even as an American.  He is my life partner and I look forward to living out the remaining years of my life at his side. 

As he so often says, we have passed the porch test.  I am humbled that he has asked me to marry him.  I look forward to growing old with him by my side and to sitting on a porch some day,  somewhere watching the sunrise and/or the sunset.  He brings with him the two most amazing little human beings.  I am honored to welcome them into my life as a step mom and to have the chance to help to raise them.  I would have never imaginged this life as possible.  I would have never dreamed that I would feel as happy, safe and secure as I do or as at peace and confident in our future personally and professionally, together and interdependently.  I am grateful beyond words to him for who he is, who he has chosen to be and who he is choosing to be and to the universe, to Yaweh for bringing us together.