Everything I Know About Marriage I Learned on a See-Saw

The school playgrounds of my childhood had four things to play on: monkey bars, a swing, a slide, and a seesaw or teeter-totter.

The seesaw was an extremely long board fitted perpendicular to a piece of large pipe that it pivoted on. The only way to hold on and ride it was to grip the sides of the board. The more advanced seesaws featured two pieces of pipe fashioned into a t-shape securely attached to the end. Those didn’t come into fashion until a few years later.

By today’s standards there was nothing safe about it. There were multiple ways to incur an injury. One of the favorite “tricks” to pull on someone was when they were up in the air and you were on the ground was to jump off and let them plummet to the hard-packed soil. No doubt this resulted in multiple spinal compression injuries. But no one paid attention to the pain because you were too busy chasing down the villainous perpetrator.

The seesaw also worked as a catapult. If you pushed off the ground with all your might and your friend on the other end braked hard when he touched the ground, no matter how tight your grip you could be dislodged. Your trajectory resembled a broken-winged quail as you sailed across the playground, landing in a cloud of dust.

One of the challenges in riding a seesaw involved the weight differential on each end. The twelve-year-old bully who was still in third grade required two to three classmates on the other end to counterbalance the board. When he ordered you to sit on the other end of the board, you were caught on the horns of a dilemma. Refuse and he’d beat you up. Join the other victims on the board, meant risking him either catapulting you or letting you drop like heavy stones into a mangled heap of knees, elbows, and heads striking each other and the ground.

The simple act of climbing on a seesaw with a friend required perfectly timed choreography. Sometimes the pivot point was four feet off the ground. If you got on first, you had it easy — just sit down on the end resting on the ground. However, that meant the other end of the board was ten feet in the air.

For your friend to get on you would have to push off the ground with all your might and they would have to jump as high as they could, hoping to grab the other end and climb on board. If that method failed, your partner would have to start at your end and walk the board toward the opposite end until the board slowly began leveling itself from the balance of weight.

The thing that made riding a seesaw easy was having the perfect partner. My perfect partner was Jane Foote. (I can’t help it if I’ve always liked girls.)

Jane and I were the exact same size, and her being a tomboy didn’t hurt, either.

We could do a soft, rhythmical up and down, each one pushing off the ground with the same amount energy that had lifted them up a second before. We could teeter-totter fast or we could teeter-totter slow.

One amazing feat we could perform was to make the board sit perfectly still, balanced on both ends.

We made and kept a promise to never jump off the teeter-totter when the other was at the apex. (I have to confess I got mad at her one time because I got a paddling for letting her copy off my spelling test. During recess that day I tried to catapult her off the seesaw, but thankfully she held on.)

As simple as it may sound, marriage is very much like a seesaw.

Just like those seesaws from my childhood, there’s nothing safe about marriage. There’re innumerable opportunities for injury, some self-inflicted and others perpetrated on us. Betrayal, neglect, abuse, and affairs cause the most harmful injuries – a broken heart, a broken spirit, and a broken mind.

The most important safeguard against being wounded by the marriage seesaw is finding that perfect partner, someone who brings balance to your life. Someone you can look at across the seesaw from a position of equality.

For a marriage to work, both people need to make a commitment to never bailing out (jumping off the seesaw) when the going gets tough.

We live in such a disposable society and commitments are treated much the same way. The prevailing attitude seems to be if there is something a person doesn’t like about their spouse, then divorce them and try again.

Who’s the strongest person in a marriage? The simple answer is, the one who’s not the weakest. In healthy marriages that’s never the same person all the time. Sometimes I’m strong. Sometimes I’m weak. When I’m the strong one, I need to be prepared to “lift” my wife. And when I’m weak, I need to have confidence she will “lift” me.

In Galatians 6:1 we have an interesting word picture of how to treat someone who needs help. The English phrase is “restore them gently.” The original Greek word that has been translated “restore” refers to putting a socket back in place, as in a dislocated shoulder.

When our spouse needs our help because of them being “down,” we should approach them the same way we would want to be treated for a dislocated joint.

But let’s not forget the reason seesaws have been a staple of children’s play for hundreds of years — it’s fun to ride a seesaw!

That dizzying feeling in the pit of your stomach when you suddenly descend rapidly; the joy of watching and listening to your partner’s laughter; the skill it takes to create that balancing act when you are sitting level; the challenge of holding on through the bumps; the relaxing feeling of a gentle ride; the exhilaration of a rapid ride; the excitement of finding that perfect partner.

Marriage can provide the same types of thrills.

It’s ok to be afraid of marriage, but don’t let that fear keep you away from the most exciting toy on the playground.

* Taken from The Wit and Wisdom of David Johnson, Volume 1: I Didn’t Know Donkeys Could Laugh.