I just celebrated my two year wedding anniversary and I finally feel married.

A couple of months ago, came across some photos of a couple who got married signing their ketubuah, which is a jewish marriage contract. When you get married in your dining room 26 days after meeting someone, there’s no time for such planning. At the time, I didn’t even know I would have the desire, as I had never seen a ketubah before.

What if we signed one now, anyways? I wondered. It’s not like there’s anything that makes it less official to sign when you’re already married. We didn’t have a religious ceremony anyway, so it’s just akin to signing an additional contract, after already being in a partnership that’s recognized.  It’s done all of the time in business and other relational matters, so why not this one?

I floated the idea to my husband and he was instantly sold, as I presumed he would be. 

There is a saying I like about how process and patterns play out: As you do one thing, so you do everything.

I was able to see my own patterns emerge through the process of planning this event, in a very meta kind of way. Because I have more self-awareness now (thanks to years of therapy, introspection, journaling, meditation, etc. etc.), I was almost an observer of my own mind.

When beginning the stages of ideation for signing a ketubuah, I was filled with elation. creativity was free flowing, as is usually the case for me. I came up with the idea of doing a small ceremony with both of our parents, that incorporated the spiritual meaning and symbolism that was missing in our legal ceremony. I thought about how I would combine my heritage and traditions of Lutheranism and Judaism into something that articulated my unique vantage point, living at the intersections of Abrahamic religions. I started to plan and research, spending hours deciding on the text for the ketubuah, finding a design that wasn’t $800, and working with the artist to execute my vision.

Then, came the procrastination.

I spent weeks knowing in the back of my mind that I needed to prepare the ceremony itself; what would I say? I knew I wanted to sing and play ukulele, but what piece(s) would I preform? Instead of practicing and sharpening my tools, I avoided the whole thing altogether because of my own fears of not performing to my expectations. After all, if I throw things together and they don’t go as planned, I can blame it on the spontaneity. If they do go well, however, I can chalk it up to my raw talent. 

Two weeks before, I wanted to back out. I kept finding reasons I didn’t want to do it any longer, mostly stemming from my anxiety and fear. As I so familiarity do, I was ready to throw it all away, despite the money and time already spent. 

One week before, I figured I would probably call it off and subsequently didn’t practice nor prepare anything for the ceremony, while also telling my husband he needed to start preparing himself.

One day before, I spent hours researching texts, putting together a rough outline in my mind, finding sheet music, while also panicking and becoming so exacerbated with myself, I broke down.

I didn’t understand why I couldn’t just pick up my ukulele and produce beautiful music instantly, when I also hadn’t played it in months. I type that seriously, because somehow internally, I expect to ‘be good enough by now’ to just be able to produce an off-the-cuff concert. 

Of course, none of it works that way. Everything that looks effortless, is actually extremely difficult. To make things look easy, they’re usually very challenging. 

I know, I know. 

But yet.

I still think ‘I should be able to.’

All of that played out as my pattern usually does. when I felt utterly defeated at 2am, as I was selecting my Bible passages, all I felt was dread.

To distract myself, I created an entire agenda for the morning of the ceremony, in which we would be tourists in a nearby area. It ended up being a total disaster, one of those days where everything that can go wrong, does. 

Consequently, I shut down. I wanted to shut everything and everyone out. 

Even though I couldn’t have predicted that there’d be absolutely zero parking where we were going, or that my husband would finally catch my cold that morning, or that there’d be no cell service, or that he’d forget to charge his phone, I still somehow felt responsible for all of it. I took on and internalized that responsibility, feeling shame as if I failed when what actually happened was just life, life-ing.

Part of me still can’t believe I broke the pattern and actually did go through with the ceremony. It wasn’t perfect, but somehow, it still was. I felt sparkly, the whole world almost nonexistent except for my husband and I as we read our speeches and shared pieces of our heart with our families. 

I felt that I’d ‘messed up’ one of my songs, but tried to remember that performance wasn’t the point; love was. And love shouldn’t be performative. 

I opened my heart so much that I cried at the end, as I recalled the feeling of knowing I had before we even met that we would get married. All of the love and care he’s given me, the life that he made possible for me, came rushing in and I allowed myself to feel it. 

If you know me, I’m not a crier; especially in public. I usually feel shame at my tears and have a hard time even crying in front of people I’m close to or in tender moments. But somehow, in that moment, in this sacred space we had created, the tears flowed easily and the only emotion I could feel was love. 

When we were driving home afterwards, I felt different. 

Even though we’d been legally married for two years, somehow now it felt more real. I couldn’t really explain it, except for that we’d been in a liminal space and the symbolism and communal rite had changed me, in all the ways I knew that they’ve been scientifically proven to, yet I somehow feel unaffected by in the same way as ‘most people.’ 

That evening felt like a wedding night; that magic in the air, the pure happiness and joy exchanged in what on any other day would feel like an ordinary dinner out. Snuggling in our warm bed, feeling as though the day was both long and short, all at once.

Maybe there is something to this wedding stuff, this religion stuff.

Sharing our love in this special way, just made it feel that much more real. And more so, seeing myself engage in this process, was as if I saw my entire life repeating in this ebb and flow, as has happened with so many things in so many ways before. I changed, but I also was still the same, and I also changed myself.

Integration.