With all the experience of a whole month of matrimony, I can tell you marriage.is.awesome! Home is wonderful. Making dinner is wonderful. Going to church is wonderful. Waking up is wonderful. Brushing my teeth is wonderful. Even laundry is wonderful! (No, I don’t expect that one to stick around ;)
The biggest challenge so far? Figuring out myself. Nope, not HIM. Me.
Now, I’ve had roommates before. I’ve had roommates who walk around naked. Roommates who wake you up in the middle of the night because they want to make Ramen noodles. Roomates who leave you with a pile of junk when they up and move in the middle of the night to marry their Army Ranger boyfriend of two months and think YOU need their ‘single gal’ crap that they certainly won’t need because they’re going off to that mysterious place called I’m Married. Even a roommate who disappeared, didn’t pay her part of the rent for three months, and still didn’t show up when I sold all her stuff to a family who’d lost everything in a fire to pay the rent. Challenging folks.
I’ve even had that one, magical roommate that totally gets you and knows your space and is understanding and super-fun and a great cook and has the awesomest dog ever. So living with people is not new to me.
But this living situation is a whole new ballgame. Because it isn’t just living with someone.
So, when you’re sharing a bathroom, and your roommate in college likes to leave the Q-Tip container a certain way, and you like to leave it a different way, you don’t care. You get two sets of Q-Tip containers. Because you’re just living together for a few months while you study Gregorian chants and their effect on Western music (BIG) and she studies something about lesson plans. It doesn’t matter.
But when your husband likes to leave the Q-Tip container a different way than you, I suppose you could live your whole life with two sets of Q-Tips, but you don’t want to. So you think, why DO I leave the Q-Tip container that way? Why does he want to leave it the other way? It is just a preference, or is there a real reason I’m doing that? Then you actually have a conversation with him about why each of you are doing that, and which one makes the most sense.
A conversation. About the box that holds the Q-Tips. And a zillion other things. And it’s totally awesome.
Oh, yes, reader (I learned that trick from Jane Eyre, kind of startling at first, isn’t it?), there are bigger ones, too. MUCH bigger ones.
Ones like when we’re driving some place and I’m trying to figure out why I reacted a certain way to something and I realize, at the very heart of it, that I can be pretty childish sometimes. That’s all it is. Sin, selfishness, and immaturity.
None of my other roommates ever made me realize anything like that.
Or like when I get all offended about some piddly little comment for no reason at all, and I think on that for a little while and realize that poor guy, he just made a joke about something the two of you have been making jokes about all weekend long, and you take THIS one the wrong way? How’s he supposed to know that?
Still pondering on that one…
But, reader, don’t think there are only perplexing ones. They are far, far outnumbered by the wonderful ones. The ones that take your breath away and make you feel like the most blessed woman on Earth.
Like every morning, when you’re still kind of hazy with sleep and hazy with not having your contacts in and hazy with it’s-still-dark-outside and he leans over you, all fresh and crisp and in his suit and not-hazy-at-all, gently holds your face as if it’s made of precious jewels, kisses all over your face and whispers, “I love you, my dear one.” And you’ve never felt so cherished in your life, except for yesterday morning when the same thing happened.
Or like when you WWAAAAAAYYYYYYY over-spice the turkey chili and he downs his whole bowl before you can even realize how completely inedible it is.
Or when ____________________ (fill in everything else that happens the whole day).
The moral of the story is, I don’t deserve him. And I’m learning more and more about why I don’t deserve him. And I think he would say the same thing.
Amid all the realizations about selfishness and childishness and moodiness, what I’m actually learning (already knew) (but did I, really?) (will I? ever? really?) is that we.can’t.do.this. Without God.
We’re so imperfect. We’re so sinful.
BUT –
God has brought us together. For His glory. (Your love makes me sing.)
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