The same friend who gave us the welcome to be a half person also gave me the best piece of marriage advice I’ve received. She told me, “I’ve only had one husband but I’ve been married to 6 or 7 different men.” She meant that her (one) husband had changed over time, and at each point, she had to work out how to be married to this particular version of him.
As we re-make ourselves here in Australia, we are learning to be married to new versions of each other. Our marriage is also being re-made.
We have spent more of our married life in Tanzania than in Australia. In many ways, Tanzania has shaped our marriage. In Tanzania, life was integrated: we were both devoted to the same thing, sharing one mind even when we played different roles. In Australia, we have different jobs and we grieve the distance from one another’s headspace. On top of that, each of us juggles multiple jobs, feeling our time and our attention split in several different directions; it’s hard to experience unity with a person who themselves is not unified. We are unfamiliar with segmenting parts of our life, making distinctions between work and family, paid roles and unpaid roles. And we are doing it all in a cost of living and housing crisis. Perhaps it is little wonder that it has been in Australia that we have both gone grey!
Our marriage turned 19 this week, and we have our task: learn how to be married to this grey-bearded man, this grey-haired woman, this person who is both familiar and strange. Get to know him; discover who she is. Learn how to be married in Australia’s injurious pace of life. Learn how to love and care and fight and make up under these conditions, with these pressures. Find joy in each other and connection with each other here. Be made new together here.
Categories: Written by Tamie
Tamie Davis
Tamie Davis is an Aussie living in Tanzania, writing at meetjesusatuni.com.
Meet Jesus at uni 
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