It’s 2am. The kitchen, once filled with only the soft hum of the dishwasher, now has a different soundtrack. I bounce and shush the way I thought I knew how, but nothing seems to comfort him. He’s only one month old, but he’s got a fresh 4.5-inch scar taking up his whole chest: a bittersweet reminder that it’s okay for him to be uncomfortable right now, he just had open-heart surgery afterall.

My husband and I move through a dance we never expected to learn. I hold our newborn and try to calm him while my husband slowly pushes the rest of his bottle through his NG tube. Slow enough not to hurt his stomach, but quick enough to help his hunger.

It’s a complicated dance. 

It’s been a complicated year. 

We finally lie down, worn out from this new routine, and pray he gets enough rest (and that we do too) because we’ll be doing it all over again in just three hours.

It’s 3am. I close my eyes and my post ‘dance’ prayers begin, it’s the only thing that keeps me sane (Psalm 34:1). I tell God I am especially thankful for the gift of being married to a nurse who helps calm my fears through all of this. 

When I think back to when we said our vows for sickness and health, I just always assumed it was talking about ‘us’. Maybe about when we were old and gray and unable to remember if it was Wednesday or Tuesday. But now, instead of ‘us’, it’s him; a young little boy who was born with a condition we pray God brings purpose out of. 

When we said our vows, we didn’t know about Liam, or our our daughter Addy. But if I could, I would have written new vows. Something like:

I vow to not panic when our daughter gets such intense gas pain in lands us in the children’s hospital for suspected appendicitis. 

Or 

I vow to hold our son’s head steady when you have to replace the NG tube I wanted to pull out because our son wasn’t feeding well. 

Don’t get me wrong, there was nothing wrong with our original marriage vows. But life as we now it now seems to require more out of those vows than we ever knew then. I’ve come to realize something since bringing our son home:

Your marriage vows aren’t just promises spoken to each other, they’re promises spoken into a future you can’t see or anticipate. A future that guarantees nothing, except hardship (John 16:33). 

Your vows will be proven most in the pediatric hospital rooms, the 3am prayers, the moments when one of you is steady and the other is barely holding it together. For the children you don’t know you’ll have, for the doctor’s appointment that ends with “I’m sorry, but your son will need open-heart surgery”, and the strength you didn’t know you’d need to live out those words. 

Vows aren’t proven in the ease of loving each other, because you made them when all you had was love. They’re proven in the serving, the showing up, the steady hands in unsteady moments, and the quiet faithfulness when no one is watching, except you. 

We thought we were promising ourselves to each other, but in reality, we were promising to build a life of endurance, tenderness, and courage for our whole family. We spoke our vows once, but they are lived daily, in new and changed ways lately. 

Nowadays, they sound less like poetry and more like:

“I’m bringing you coffee.”

“I already gave him his medicine.”

“You’re not crazy, this is hard.”

“I gave her a bath so you could hold him more.”

“I’ll turn off his feeding pump.”

“I emptied the diaper genie.” (This one is a personal favorite)

I pray that your vows get the chance to change, too. Because one day you’ll realize they were never meant to stop with just the two of you. The love practiced in your marriage quietly spills into the people you serve at home and in your close “village.”

A simple gesture, like bringing me coffee, fills my cup in a way that reminds me to bring coffee to a tired mom-friend before a visit. A small gesture or affirming word is life-giving (Proverbs 18:20-21). And it is (and was) so easy to make these big promises to encourage and serve when an audience of your family and friends are looking on. But, imagine the ripple effect if we lived out the heart of our marriage vows not just toward our spouse, but toward every person God has entrusted to us.