Hi all! Hope everyone had a nice Christmas and New Years, no matter how you celebrated. Trung and I were able to spend Christmas Eve with some of our best friends here, and Christmas day with both my girls and my parents. Successful holiday sharing – woohoo! (because we all know holiday sharing is something you have to tackle when blending two lives….)
You know, after a wedding, people are pretty good about giving the new couple some space to just settle in and get used to their new life together. There aren’t rules on how long to wait before you reach out to them, of course, but inevitably friends and family decide the time is up (whether you are ready or not), and they invite you over, or text or call, and the question they ask is always “Sooo….. how is married life?”
That can be a loaded question, my friends. (cue awkward silence and quick exchanging of glances or arm nudges)
Whereas 20-year olds couples or those that have known each other for years before they got married might often answer “It’s amazing!”… when our friends started asking that question, we were gut level honest: “Uhhh ..we’re adjusting”. I’m not sure our friends knew how to respond to that!
Now, I can’t speak to much of what my husband is going through, but I know having a wife is quite a bit different than all the roommates he had. I am a LOT more particular than they were, for one. I have some demands on his time they never would have placed (like… please call me if you won’t be home for dinner so I don’t cook for two… and what do you mean you forgot to tell me you were scheduled to work? I was hoping to spend the day with you). I know both of us have also had to do some vetting with our best friends these first few months. My sister-in-law and best friend in Illinois have been key to this for me. I have called them often asking “hey.. um.. is this normal? how did you all navigate this when you were first married?” I am sure my new husband has asked his best friend some similar questions.
Just about every book, blog, website, and happily married couple will all tell you that the first year of marriage is hard – so I figured because I knew this, I’d be set. Oh, was I wrong about that! (ummmmmm…yeah.. you can start chuckling now, go on….)
What actually happened when I moved in and started making his bachelor pad our “home”, is that all these expectations I had of how we would spend time each week building our life together started surfacing. It’s like something in me kicked in and started executing some sort of internal “plan” on how I operated within marriage. I knew I couldn’t just live my single life in a new house. The framework had changed, therefore the “rules” changed too.
Need I remind you I’m an Enneagram 1. Of course there is a plan.
My plan included dinner together almost every night, a date night each week, figuring out each other’s love language and working on speaking it, asking each other questions so we could learn… share what we had studied in scripture, go for walks. Oh goodness. When I finally recognized I was operating on some built in “plan” — I was able to own up to the fact it had grown out of having a schedule raising my girls, paired with expectations of what I was looking forward to being an empty nester. That was a hard thing to own up to. I wasn’t used to having dinner “whenever”, having a ton of flexible time, or having conversations whenever they came up.
The day it hit me that we could build this marriage together, and it could look however we wanted it to, was revolutionary on a number of levels, let me tell you.
Whereas I knew this in my head before getting married, now I am keenly aware that I have no clue on how to build this particular marriage with this particular guy. That would leave me feeling helpless, but for one fact:
I know the One who does know how to build it.
It shouldn’t have surprised me, but I guess I take a while to hold onto lessons. The entire time we dated, there have been a few passages of Scripture that the Lord has used to encourage me and remind me that HE is the one building our relationship. Rather than go over all of them, I’ll share one you might be familiar with:
“Unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labor in vain” – Psalm 127:1
He’s built the foundation, sure…..Yet here I go, getting all my own lumber and bricks and mortar and trying to build as fast as I can. Obviously that is getting me NOWHERE.
One thing my new husband has been observant about is that I always am more in a rush for things than he is. He takes time, considers things, trusts that things will come to pass in God’s timing. It’s not that I don’t do that, I just do it in … well.. a much more condensed timeframe than he does. I want to hurry God along if I can (yes, I know how ridiculous that sounds.)
I find that I must continually remind myself that all those marriages out there that are doing well didn’t just happen over night. They aren’t just because they are OUR age either. They took time. Like a vineyard, they needed sun and rain. The vines needed to be tended to and pruned when needed. We are just starting our journey… two vines planted side-by-side….that have yet to see what it looks like to grow together.
We’ve been at this 5 months. I need to give myself some grace!! 🙂
So here are my encouragements to all you newlyweds out there:
* Remember that God knew you would be good together, so learning to navigate your (unexpected) differences is absolutely possible.
* Close friends are there when you join in the covenant of marriage, because you will need them. Take advantage of that, and trust their wisdom.
* Your marriage needs to be YOURS. You may pick a few things from each of your families you want to reflect in your marriage, or you may not. You may (and I think should) learn from books or blogs, other couples, things you read or hear to make your marriage better over time, but it will NOT mirror your parent’s marriage, and it will NOT mirror any previous marriage. Don’t be afraid to talk about what you want it to look like.
*** If you have been married before: No matter how much you have pursued healing and worked through your issues from your first marriage, things will come out once you are in a relationship again. Be honest with yourself and recognize when you are reacting out of fear or hurt from your previous relationship, or when you are projecting. Your new spouse cannot live in the shadow of your previous one.
Above all else, remember this:
Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things (1 Corinthians 13:7). Goodness knows we cannot do that on our own – but the Author of Love is willing and able to!
Blessings, my friends! Til next time.
Finding the Life 