Newlywed Life | Yours, Mine and Ours: Sharing Ownership of Belongings Reveals a Shared Life
/STEPHANIE FRIES
For me and my husband, moving into our first house was a bit unorthodox. Two weeks after our wedding, we moved to Japan and into a hotel on a military base. Two weeks after hotel-living, we were granted access to our new home with temporary furniture. Two weeks after residing in a home together, my husband was sent off on his first deployment. Two weeks after he deployed, our shipment of household goods arrived for me to unpack and organize.
PHOTOGRAPHY: SARAH WIRTH PHOTOGRAPHY, LLC.
I felt a tension of emotion in this experience. On the one hand, I was saddened that I could not share this time with my husband, especially because I was opening many wedding gifts for the first time. On the other hand, I could turn up the music and take my time nesting into our new home, preparing it as a gift for his highly anticipated homecoming!
With every emptied box, our separate contributions were combined within our home. Our extra bedroom, which became an office, was the most visual representation of this new shared ownership of our marriage. His and her pens came together in one jar. His and her book collections came together on one bookshelf. His and her computers were placed on one table. His and her picture frames were displayed in one gallery wall.
“What’s mine is yours” became really real. With great joy, I realized I married into the three-part Jason Bourne movie series! And with great humility, I relinquished complete possession to my own personal closet and bathroom storage.
The tangible experience of bringing our things into one home reveals a new shared life. It is simple—almost common sense—but it is profound. Only in marriage are two hearts bound together in an eternal, covenantal union. The environment of our first shared home is the visual representation of this truth.
Now, one year into marriage, I look in our kitchen and see the heart of our home. I look at our bookshelf and see our growing collection of hobbies, travel guides, and conversations. I look into our original office and I see our first baby’s nursery--the most abundant representation of the union of our love, in a new life.
Just as our hearts and minds have grown more intimately together through the experiences of our first year of marriage, our home has flourished into a place of complete shared ownership.
Even more, the home is a place for rest, hospitality, sorrow, joy, relationships, and growth. What realities, what truths, are made visible through the environment of the home and through your experience of sharing ownership with your spouse?
If you are considering living with a significant other before marriage, consider what it means that the visible reality of your home miscommunicates the the invisible reality of your vocation; though your tangible belongings begin to come together, your lives are not covenantally bound until after receiving the sacrament of marriage.
If you are married, in what ways does your home represent and reveal a truth about the growing unity between you and your spouse?
The fullness of God’s joy is received when our visible lives reveal his image; we reveal him by becoming who he created us to be. May our lives, and our homes, be a platform to reveal the mystery of the free, total, faithful, and fruitful love of marriage.
