I Build. He Maintains. And Neither Works Without the Other.
There are a lot of things people can look at in our life today and say, “Look what she built.”
The business.
The farm.
The products.
The team.
The ideas that somehow went from thoughts in my head to actual things people can hold in their hands. And I am so proud of those things.
I am a builder. It is one of the things I discovered and know about myself. I see what something could be before it exists. I have ideas faster than I can execute them. I’m willing to take risks, change directions, tear something apart and rebuild it when I think there’s a better way.
Michael is different. He maintains.
And the older I get, the more I realize that almost everything I have been able to build exists because there was someone beside me willing to consistently take care of what had already been built.
Building Gets the Attention. Maintaining Keeps It Standing.
We live in a culture that celebrates builders. We love the person who starts the company, takes the risk, buys the farm, launches the product, quits the job or tries the crazy idea.
Those stories are exciting. Maintenance isn't.
Nobody takes a picture of the fence that got repaired before the cows got out.
Nobody applauds when the weeds get pulled or the tomatoes plants get pruned.
Nobody sees the hundred small problems handled before they became big problems.
Nobody celebrates doing the same necessary thing for the thousandth time simply because it needed to be done.
But remove the person doing those things and you find out very quickly how valuable they were. Because building without maintenance eventually becomes worthless. You can build something beautiful, but someone has to care for it.
Someone has to notice when it starts wearing down.
Someone has to repair it.
Someone has to create stability while everyone else is chasing growth.
A farm needs it.
A business needs it.
A home needs it.
A family needs it.
A marriage needs it.
And so much of what I have been able to build exists because Michael has spent years doing exactly that.
Before My Ideas Made Money, Michael Did.
That sentence probably sums up a significant portion of our marriage.
Before the business worked, Michael did.
Before my ideas were profitable, he went to his job every day and brought home a dependable paycheck.
Before there was evidence that any of the things I was learning, trying or creating would turn into something meaningful financially, he provided stability.
And that stability bought me something incredibly valuable, time.
Time to stay home with our children.
Time to invest in our family.
Time to learn to grow and preserve our own food.
Time to develop skills.
Time to try things.
Time to fail.
Time to spend hundreds and hundreds of hours becoming good at things that weren't paying me anything yet. Time to become the woman who would eventually be capable of building what we have today.
I don't think we talk about this part of entrepreneurship enough. We love to talk about risk.
“Bet on yourself.”
“Take the leap.”
“Chase the dream.”
But risk is much easier to take when someone else is making sure the mortgage gets paid. There were seasons when I could afford to make very little because Michael reliably went to work. There were ideas I could afford to test because our children still had food on the table whether the idea worked or not. There were unprofitable seasons I could survive because he was dependable.
My willingness to take risks is only part of the true story. The fact that someone created enough stability for me to take them is the other half of it.
There Was a Cost to That Stability
Sometimes when we look backward, it's easy to romanticize the choices that worked out. But those choices cost something.
There were things we didn't buy.
There were trips we didn't take.
There were fun things we passed on.
There were plenty of times when another income would have made life easier. Michael was willing to do without some of the things he wanted because we had decided that having me home with our children mattered more. And he kept going to work. Year after year.
Not because every day was fulfilling.
Not because it was his dream.
Not because anyone was applauding him for being dependable.
He did it because our family depended on him. At the time, I don't think either of us could have known exactly what those years were creating. Looking back now, I can see it. Those weren't the years before we started building this life.
Those WERE the building years.
We just couldn't see the finished structure yet.
He Never Needed Me to Be Smaller
There is another piece of our marriage that I appreciate more now than I probably understood when I was younger. My strengths have never intimidated Michael. He has never needed me to become smaller so he could feel bigger.
I have strong opinions.
I have big ideas.
I'm ambitious.
I move quickly.
When I believe something can be better, I have a hard time leaving it alone. Michael has never tried to contain that part of me. He gave it somewhere safe to grow, even though many times it made him nervous or uncomfortable. That doesn't mean he agrees with every idea I have. He absolutely does not. Sometimes his job seems to be reminding me that ideas eventually have to interact with reality.
I'm usually asking: “What if we did this?”
And he's asking: “Okay, but how are we actually going to keep this running?”
I create. He stabilizes.
I push. He anchors.
I'm comfortable disrupting what exists to build something better. He understands that eventually someone has to stop disrupting things long enough to take care of them.
For a long time, I probably would have considered the building part more valuable. I don't anymore.
We Don't Need to Be Good at the Same Things
One of the best things about our marriage is that neither of us needs the other person to become more like ourselves.
There are things I am exceptionally good at. There are things Michael is exceptionally good at. And there are plenty of things each of us is terrible at.
Marriage hasn't required us to pretend otherwise. My strengths don't diminish him. His strengths don't diminish me. We don't have to compete for the same role. We need each other to be really good at our own. And when I look around at the life we've built together, I can see both of us everywhere. I can see the places where I pushed us to try something that didn't make sense yet. And I can see the places where he made sure everything didn't fall apart while I figured it out.
I can see my fingerprints on the things I created. And his on the things he quietly kept standing.
Success Has a Support Structure
I think this is the part of success stories we often miss. We see the person who took the risk. We don't always see the person who made the risk survivable.
We see the person building something new. We don't see the person maintaining everything that already exists.
We see the growth. We don't see the stability underneath it.
And sometimes the person receiving the applause isn't the person who carried the heaviest load during the years when nobody was watching. I don't say that to minimize what I have built.
I worked hard for it.
I took risks.
I learned.
I failed.
I tried again.
I built.
But that's only half the truth.
The other half is that I was able to do those things because there was a steady, dependable man beside me who spent years making sure the foundation didn't move while I was reaching for the next thing.
So yes, there are things in our life I can point to and say, “I built that.” But underneath almost every one of them is something Michael quietly kept standing.
I build. He maintains.
A week ago, Michael and I celebrated our 23rd anniversary. Reflecting back on the personal growth and all that has been accomplished, I don't honestly know what our life would look like if he wasn't who he is. Dependable and wholly focused on taking care of what we have worked so hard for. Michael has also said to me "We wouldn't be here if it weren't for you." forever being focused on growth and intentionally building towards something.
And after all these years, I've realized something:
Neither one of us works very well without the other. <3
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