So, yeah... so it's been quite a long while since I have posted on this blog... It may have something to do with something really insignificant and silly that happened. Something that's called, ohhh, I dunno...
GETTING MARRIED!
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This is not actually me and Julia. We're standing
behind those doors glaring out at you from the
shadows. |
What?? Yeah, that's right. This past June, on the 20th, I was, at what felt like very long last, married to my bestest friend of all of forever, Julia. And you can read an earlier blog post on how we met. Unless I didn't write such a post. In which case... You don't even know anything. But I'll try and fix that at my earliest inconvenience.
So, yeah. Marriage. We are approaching our fifth monthiversary, (pretty crazy that it's already been almost half of a year, where does the time go?) and in these first few months, my wife and I have come through a lot, and learned a lot.
Here's the thing: Thankfully because we are best friends, we had no preconceived notions that marriage was going to be Rainbows & Butterflies. We were not one of those couples that elderly married folks like to chide as being the head-in-the-clouds, you-will-complete-me-and-we-will-be-happy-forever type... which, sometimes I wonder if those couples even really exist... Anyway, thankfully my wife and I escaped with very few elbows to the ribs accompanied by the smug cliché "Just wait 'til the honeymoon's over, Heh-Heh-HEHHHHH" remarks. Which is good because they might well have made a sudden but inevitable acquaintance with my fist (I mean seriously... Why do you have to do that? Why do you have to say that? When someone says that I always immediately want to respond "Well, I'm so sorry to hear your marriage is apparently so awful." Anyways, I digress). No, we knew marriage would be difficult. Heck, just take a look at the divorce rates in the United States and you'll become very conscious of how hard marriage is.
But admittedly—and as anyone genuinely wise and helpful will tell you—knowing intellectually and experiencing actually can be very, very different. Honestly, the best advice I ever heard going into marriage was summed up in this phrase:
Marriage is a beautiful tool used to perfect us. But we don't become perfected by asking what's in it for us. We become perfected by being self-denying. Sacrifice our wants and needs every single day in order to prioritize our spouse. Is it difficult? Oh, you better believe it is. See, I knew this going in. Both of us did. So at least we were "ahead of the game." And I'm glad for that! And I do think it is so very important to be aware of that going into marriage. But it is so important to also remember that knowledge is often times a poor substitute for experience. It reminds me of how almost every mother I have talked to has at some point told me that she knew the ins and outs of having a baby and raising the him or her. She had all the books, she had all the DVDs, she had all the tips and tricks given to her by friends... but when the time actually came each of them admitted that nothing really could have been enough to truly prepare them for the experience (and that applies to the negatives and the positives). And it works very much the same way with marriage. Sure, read the books, watch the DVDs, talk to the counselors, go to the seminars, talk to married couples. All of that is a good idea. But just remember there is a point at which learning intellectually will no longer be of any help, and experience will be the only way to truly learn.
I experienced this very profoundly recently. For a few days I was struggling with something my wife was doing (something not bad in and of itself). I would try to just ignore it. I prayed about it. And here's the interesting thing: intellectually I kept thinking to myself, Remember, it's not about me, it's about her! Essentially trying to remind myself that true love is self-sacrificing. But even though I kept thinking about that intellectually, emotionally I just "could not" embrace it. So, one evening last week I promptly sat her down and, to put it bluntly (though, I'd like to think I said it with some measure of care), I gave her a list of things that she was doing that were affecting me negatively, and asked her to come to a compromise with me. One of the (many) problems with how I handled this was that, because I let my emotions get in the way, I ended up coming across more like I wanted her to just change herself for me. Go beyond compromise, and just change. Period. And because that's how she processed what I was saying, it hurt her very deeply. We went to bed both upset, and as we lay there I started to realize a very deep guilt, like I had just done something terribly wrong. I hugged her and said "I'm sorry, I have no idea what I'm doing." She echoed the same back to me, and we fell asleep.
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This is the very pond. And that's Julia up there. But this picture
is not from the day I'm describing. This is from a couple months ago,
when we still loved each other.
Psyche. |
The next day we walked down the street to a giant pond near us and sat on a bench. We just wanted to get out, and we had books in hand ready to just relax. But as we got closer to the park, I could tell something was wrong. We sat down and watched a ginormous flock of Canadian geese swimming around in the pond, and we talked. She was still feeling hurt by what I said. For a few minutes, my emotional defenses started to go back up... until the feeling of guilt was just overwhelming. Something was wrong. And finally it hit me.
Remembering that my responsibility in this marriage is not to change my wife... but to change
myself. It's not my responsibility to make her change to meet my needs, but for
me to change to meet
her needs.
Now, does this mean we should never speak up about anything and just take all the dirt that's thrown at us? If a husband or wife is being oppressive, careless, ignorant of your feelings, etc., are you supposed to just keep your mouth shut and take it? No, I personally don't believe so. I believe marriage is a partnership. I believe marriage should involve openness and honesty. Summed up: marriage should involve COMMUNICATION. But of course the key to that is also how you communicate. And here is where I failed.
Rather than me getting a hold of my emotions and being able to just calmly lay how I was feeling before my wife and asking if we could come to some sort of compromise, I let my emotions take control and I blew the whole thing out of proportion and ended up hurting her.
A dear friend once told me, "You will experience fewer things more scarring than when you say something that makes your wife cry."
He was right.
And so, as I realized what I was doing, I just suddenly stopped talking, and leaned my head back, and told my wife that I had forgotten one of the key things about marriage. Self-denial. Self-sacrifice. Changing myself rather than trying to change her. And being so careful with her feelings. We just sat there and hugged for a while and then began to walk back home. On our way there, I didn't say much. My eyes just wandered about. I felt upset over my failure.... But also a small, little goblinoid voice in my head said "But it's not FAIR! I want it to be about ME!!!"
We got home and I decided to go out and do some grocery shopping and give my wife some time to herself while I took some time for myself. While I was out, I thought long and hard about everything, felt a little better, but still bothered. When I got home I found my wife sitting on the couch, writing in her journal—I knew it was about what had happened—and she looked up at me. I could tell she was still having trouble. We talked some more about the situation, and my emotions started taking a hold of me again, but rather than saying anything I knew I needed to withdraw into the kitchen and clean for a while and work on dinner. Every once and a while, as my eyes drifted across the doorway into the kitchen, I could see my wife down the hall peaking at me around the corner, and then going back to what she was doing. After I got dinner in the oven, I sat down in the dining room and started to write down some recipes. Eventually she came down the hall and approached me cautiously, I could see deep concern in her eyes. "Hey," I said. After a few moments of silence, she asked, "Are you mad at me?" to which I immediately said "No! Of course not." (because I wasn't mad at her; I was upset over the circumstances, but I wasn't mad at her). As soon as I said that she broke down in tears, and at that moment...
Nothing else mattered to me.
Selfishness was gone. Goblinoid voice was blown to smithereens. I felt like such an idiot-jerk, but in the best possible way. And I jumped up and hugged her. It was so stupid. The whole thing was stupid. I was stupid. The end.
Now here's the thing: because of how scarring it truly is to cause your spouse to cry because of something you did or said... multiple times in one argument... it would really be preferable for it to never have to go that far for me or you to realize how selfish we are being. But granted... in the beginning it may be the best way. I mean, let's face it, when you first start out, you are going to be a heckuva lot more stubborn, your heart is going to be a heckuva lot harder. And so in that there is almost a rather frightening warning:
It is really frightening. But true. What will it take? Your spouse crying? Your spouse not talking to you for a while? Your spouse needing time away from you? Divorce?
Too much is at risk when we make marriage about us.
It's not worth it. No matter what that goblinoid voice in your head tells you. It's only worth it if you're some sadistic monster who gets pleasure out of hurting people you love and who love you. But again, I can say all I want on this subject to you, but in the end it's more than likely going to come down to what happens, how you learn, when you actually experience it.
My wife and I are only a few months into our first year of marriage, and we are experiencing what it is like to live in such close proximity with someone who is different from ourselves. We are already learning so much, and I know we've got a long way—Lord-willing—to go yet. But we knew all this entering into marriage, and yet we still went through with it. We've made an agreement, a commitment, to spend each and every day learning to love each other unconditionally, learning to deny ourselves, and allowing God to use this process to bring us closer to each other, but also closer to Him and who He is. We'll go through the heartaches, and the tears, and the anger, and the huffing and puffing, and we are going to work hard.
Because both of us know marriage is worth it. Marriage is worth killing our self-will for. Marriage is worth fighting for.
So... get out there, get'cherself a spouse, and kill yourself!
...well.... not literally, of course...
