Marriage is so good y’all. But so hard too.
I think people need to share both of those things more often, don’t you?
I think if more people shared about both the blessings and the normal little battles in marriage, then it would help other couples find comfort in being able to relate.
It would encourage them seek marriage to begin with – to see it as a desirable, worthy, blessing of a thing, not a “ball and chain.”
It would encourage them, in the middle of their battles, to hang on. To handle things a different way. To know, on the flip side of every opportunity to pull away from our spouses, God has placed an opportunity to lean in and grow together instead of grow apart.
There’s not many standing up and speaking out for Biblical marriage in this day and age:
1 man, 1 woman,
in good times and bad,
when they’re pleasing each other
& when they’re “growing” each other,
til death do they part.
There’s also not many Christian married couples who are brave enough to show their real. You know, not just the cute selfies (though those are real, and a real blessing too), but also the stuff like I’m getting ready to share.
The stuff I’m fairly certain every married couple goes through, but nobody wants to talk about it —because, well, we don’t even want to go through it let alone rehash it again in a post.
The stuff all the single people who are longing to find a soulmate may shame us for sharing because they say we should cherish one another and that if they were in our position, they’d just naturally look past all the little offenses. (They wouldn’t, though, because looking past offenses is not at all natural. It takes help. And practice. 16 years into marriage, and a great marriage I would say, and yet my husband and I still offend each other often and have to put love into practice intentionally.)
I get it, I do. Not wanting to share.
I don’t make a habit of airing out my “dirty laundry” in this place either.
But there’s a difference between venting and complaining about your spouse on social media, and being authentic and secure enough in your marriage to let God use your silly little spats (& his subsequent, ultra-good guidance) to show others that they’re normal. To show them that it’s probably not just a you and your husband thing, when y’all disagree, it’s probably a women-men thing.
My husband and I found the marriage class in our church to be so freeing because it showed us that very thing: that most couples have the same issues, and it’s because men and women’s brains are wired differently, and no matter how long we are married we will never be the same.
And that’s ok!
If God wanted us to be the same, he would have not have specified that female and male were created to be partnered with one another. And once partnered, permanently. {And no matter what anyone else is preaching these days, I will stick with what the Bible says on that. I don’t make the rules in my world, I just try my best to live by the rule of the One who did make the world and all of us who are in it.}
Honestly, there’s too much gender confusion going on in this world in my opinion, and I really believe most of it boils down to the fact that nobody is teaching the difference in the genders other than our anatomy.
We need to understand it’s not just our “parts” that make us different, but also our minds, and our souls.
We were not created to feel the same and think the same all the time. And – contrary to what Hallmark conditions us to believe, we weren’t even designed just to make each other happy. {There’s a really good book called Sacred Marriage that talks all about that.}
God puts us in relationship with our spouse, in the context of a committed marriage, both to be each other’s help meets AND to sharpen each other.
Iron against iron.
My sharp edges against my husband’s,
his against mine.
And you know what?
That doesn’t always feel good.
But it’s supposed to teach us and condition us over time to be quicker to forgive, quicker to lean in when we want to pull away, quicker to love “our enemy” who is really our partner and best friend- but in some moments FEELS like they’re against us.
It’s good practice for other relationships, it really is.
So- last night my husband and I got some practice. 😉 {Yeah- here’s where I get to the authentic part.}
Sometimes our days go so fast-
my husband’s at work,
mine at home with the kids-
homeschooling,
toddler/preschool-wrangling,
housekeeping and odd-job doing…
Sometimes we don’t take the time we know we should – to transition into “together” mode,
which again- seems like it should be natural after 16 years of marriage and 20 years of relationship, but it’s not.
And by that I mean this:
I am an introvert.
I get energy from being alone.
But the thing is- now that I homeschool,
I’m almost NEVER alone.
So by the end of the day, I am drained of energy, and would like nothing more than an hour of time to recharge before spending more together time with anyone (which I love, it’s just not energizing for me).
My husband is an extrovert.
He gets energy from being together with the people he loves.
But the thing is- he doesn’t get to be home with us all day doing the things we love together.
He spends his days working hard at a stressful job.
So by the end of the day, he is drained of energy and ready for a recharge too- in togetherness.
He needs me to be able to give him that.
And it doesn’t make sense to him that all day I can be energetically texting him, excited for our evening together, but by the time he gets home I’m spent.
We are different.
When I am intentional to take an hour alone before he gets home, to recharge, so that I can enjoy togetherness which recharges him, things go much better.
But sometimes I forget.
Or I get so busy trying to get all the things done, that it doesn’t happen.
Yesterday I forgot.
Yesterday I was busy trying to help mow the yard before he got home, planning for my son to take over when my hubby got home- so that we could edit our podcast together, which is one way he enjoys spending our time with each other.
Yesterday my hubby didn’t pause either on his way home, to remember we are different.
He came home, found me mowing instead of ready to spend time together like he had been looking forward to, and assumed I wasn’t prioritizing what was important to him. He didn’t give me the chance to tell him that I was tagging my son in. He just let me know, in words, that he wished I would have been ready to podcast.
They weren’t even mean words, y’all…
but to a girl whose love language is words of affirmation…
and to a girl who was doing her best to love him all day through acts of service (not his love language, but necessary in a household)…
for him to express that he didn’t feel appreciative and he didn’t feel respected, that FELT so unloving.
And what do we do, women, when we feel unloved?
We disrespect.
Oh boy did I disrespect.
I let him know that he was being insensitive.
Unappreciative.
Jerky.
I dramatically finished mowing the lawn.
Dramatically made dinner,
and plopped it in front of him, “pleasantly”
(Y’all know what I mean by this- nice, but overly nice. Like- “Dude, you’re so lucky I’m making you dinner when I’d rather throw it at your face right now.” 🤪)
And then I became even more emotional when he wouldn’t eat the dinner, which he was “lucky” I had prepared for him after the way he greeted me when he came home.
This turned into tears.
And each of us punishing each other in our own love language.
(Do you do that, y’all? We never noticed until about a year ago but we do. And talking to other couples I think that’s totally normal.)
Me- giving him the silent treatment. (Withholding words.)
Him- withdrawing from me, refusing to be in the same room. (Withholding time.)
The biggest problem with that tendency, y’all, is that it doesn’t really get our point across.
It only punishes ourselves.
Because when we fight anyway, he doesn’t want to talk and I don’t want to be in the same room.
But I really DO want to talk,
and he really DOES want to be in the same room, and yet it’s our own selves preventing each of those things.
So when we withhold those things, it does nothing to make the other understand our side of the issue, all it does is put a wall up between our hearts and being able to connect with one another.
But you know what does connect us?
Love.
And you know who the source of all love is?
God.
He is the place where we can go to get it when we are momentarily not “feeling it.”
He is the place where we can ALWAYS receive our receiving love-language (He always has words for me and he always has time for my husband)…
He is the place where we can go, to ask for the brand that our spouse needs us to be able to give them… (I can ask Him for the ability to forgive my husband and desire to spend time with him – just like I would naturally if he were saying kind words to me; and my husband can ask God for the ability to forgive me and say kind things to me and have conversation with me when he’d rather shut down.)
So that’s what happened yesterday.
I was in the bathroom, pouting, waiting for my hubby to leave for bowling so that I could have some alone time and recharge, and God met me in the bathroom.
“Go after him,” he said.
“Leave your own stuff for later. Go watch him bowl.”
“Lean in, stick together, when you most want to pull away.”
“Trust me. I know best. I know his heart. It’ll work.”
So I did.
I drove to the bowling alley.
I prayed on the way there.
I warfared for my marriage, declaring to the enemy out loud that he wasn’t going to win.
Ladies- sometimes we have to fight for our marriages…
and sometimes the person we most have to fight is our SELVES.
Our right to be self-ish, self-centered.
We must resist the enemy and his temptations to make things all about us. And then he will flee from us. And God will counsel us.
So I walk in the bowling alley and I can tell my hubby is surprised to see me.
I smile at him… a genuine smile, not fake in any way.
You see, God already wiped the slate of my heart clean, magically (I don’t know how he does it) on the way over!
I say to him “I thought you could use a cheerleader tonight”, and then I go to the food counter to buy him some breadsticks because I know he hasn’t eaten yet (he pushed aside dinner earlier, when we were both being dramatic.)
But I knew he was hungry.
He had worked hard all day.
And because God had helped me fill his deeper hunger by showing up – which was needing to know I wanted to spend time with him…he instantly forgave me and could eat.
So we shared an order of breadsticks and a smile.
And all was right and good again.
Instantly!
God knew what we both needed.
He is AMAZING like that!
The perfect translator between two very different souls!
Sitting there, present, unhurried for a rare moment, I was observant.
I picked up a bottle of Krazy glue that was sitting on the table, remembering how my hubby mentioned needing it for bowling but realizing all of a sudden I hadn’t actually listened to w.h.y….and becoming curious about this.
“It’s to keep the ball from sticking to my hands”, he shared, graciously, again.
Running my fingers over his super-glue-smooth hands, I asked more questions.
“How long does that stay on??”
“A few days”, he said.
Wow. It hit me just then.
Had I ever noticed the glue on his hands for days? No.
Which means that we haven’t been holding hands enough during the week.
A God reminder.
And then one last God-wink, just to show me he had been ahead of this whole event, already prepared to encourage:
The glue bottle caught my eye again.
And he repeated to my heart:
“Always choose to STICK together (bond together like super glue) when you find yourselves pulling part…”
❤️
WOW.
HE’S SO GOOD.
From Full 