Once upon a time I made some cookies that didn’t turn out quite right. I thought they were edible; my husband sampled one and spit it out with a dramatic gag.  I lost my marbles and he defended his reaction.  Before either of us knew what was happening, we were fighting about things that had nothing to do with cookies.  It wasn’t our best moment.

Thankfully, we both regained the marbles we had lost.  We said we were sorry and we forgave each other.  He went to the store and bought more ingredients and some flowers.  I made new cookies that we enjoyed together.

Rupture, repair.

That is one of our more ridiculous examples, but our marriage has been built on a cycle of rupture and repair.  It is a cycle that is foundational to all enduring relationships.

We mess up.  We lose it.  We make mistakes, we yell, we say the wrong thing.  Over and over again, we do things to hurt each other, both accidentally and on purpose.

If that’s the end of the story, then our relationships are in major trouble.  If that is where we stop, we are just wounding each other over and over again.  Our hearts and relationships don’t stand a chance against the reality of our flawed human condition.

But thankfully the rupture doesn’t have to be the end of the story.  What comes after rupture is repair.

We say we are sorry.  We forgive.  We talk it through, we hug, we reconnect.  Over and over again, we do things to make it right.

It’s been about six weeks of the stay-at-home order, six weeks that we’ve been home together, the five of us in one house.

The five of us in one house, working, schooling, eating, playing, making messes and cleaning up.  There’s been way more messes to clean up in the last weeks, and not just in the kitchen.  There’s been more ruptures, more bickering, more tears, more anger, and more hurt feelings.I think it’s bound to happen when you are sharing the same space so closely for so long.

But there have also been more repairs.  There’s been more hugs, more words of encouragement, more apologies and more forgiveness.  The kids are bickering more, but they are also spending way more hours playing together happily.  Jim and I snap, but we say we are sorry and make amends.

It’s easy to get concerned about parenting and marriage and friendships in these times.  Stress is high, resources are low, and miscommunication abounds.  But the absence of conflict isn’t a marker of a healthy relationship. Healthy relationships happen when we can work through conflict in productive ways, when we can mess things up and then make them right.

Our goal in relationships is not to get it right all the time.  Our goal is to know how to make a repair after there’s been a rupture, to be able to work through the conflict in healthy and productive ways.

The amazing thing is that the process of rupture and repair actually strengthens relationships.  When we think about building muscle, we know that it is the process of small tears and healing repairs makes the muscle stronger.  In the process of relationships, the cycle of working through conflict and repairing the damage can strengthen and deepen the connection.

If we commit to repairing the ruptures that inevitably happen, we can come out of this with stronger marriages and families and friendships than we started with.  It won’t be easy or painless, but it will be worth it.