God, marriage, and the cosmos

I read a very interesting blog a few days ago, and judging by the number of reposts I saw on social media, I'd venture to say I wasn't the only one. This blogger asserted that her husband isn't actually what many people like to refer to their spouses - her soulmate. And I agree with her, to an extent. A couple of years ago, I had a very similar conversation with my college pastor (the same pastor who, just a few short weeks ago, married Garrett and me) about finding "the perfect husband". I remember being almost shocked when Stew shared that God doesn't necessarily have one person picked out especially for me, that ultimately who I marry is a choice I make, and I could have a long and happy marriage with one of a number of people.

That threw me! Didn't Disney movies always tell me that "one day my prince will come" and it will be "a whole new world" when I meet him and I'll think to myself "so this is love" and when he finally decides to "kiss the girl" there may or may not be fireworks?

This is a very poor picture of love and of marriage. It builds up romance as the end all, be all of a relationship. While love can be very romantic, our culture has absolutely over-romanticized marriage. Romantic love, per our culture, is the warm fuzzies of Disney movies. It's the heart-racing, palms-sweating, dizzy-eyed giddiness. But it cannot be sustained. Unfortunately, that's why so many marriages fail. If one goes into marriage with the expectation for a constant, consistent feeling of romance, that expectation will be unmet and will leave that person jaded and wanting more, or worse, totally convinced that he or she married the "wrong person". It's been three months of dating, seven months of engagement, and two months of marriage, and I don't always get giddy over Garrett. My heart doesn't jump out of my chest each and every time he gets home from work and smiles at me. I love being with him, and I love seeing him after any sort of absence. And he does still sweep me off my feet sometimes. But I'm not surviving on romantic love. And I'm sure not banking on romance to carry our marriage through.

I think it's just fine to consider your spouse your soulmate. After all, Garrett is my soul's mate. He's the person I have chosen. But it isn't because all the stars were aligned that fateful day in Golden, Missouri. And although I did grow to love Garrett deeply, I didn't choose to marry him because of that. I chose to marry him because I choose to be in love with him everyday. And when I don't feel in love with him, I love him anyway.

I would like to give credit where credit is due, but I don't remember where I saw this, or when. All I know is that a number of years ago, I read the following, or heard it, and from that instant, it has stuck with me:

You don't fall in love; you fall in holes.

You don't fall out of love; you fall out of trees.

It may sound silly, but it is PROFOUND. Love isn't something that, by some cosmic occurrence, happened to me. I'm not the victim of Cupid's arrows. I didn't just happen to fall into it, and I certainly won't just happen to fall out. It is a decision, plain and simple.

God is my true Spirit-mate. God completes me. He made me for himself, was the first one to love me, and is the only one who has, can, and will love me perfectly. And since the day I decided to follow him, the ultimate purpose of my life, the one goal that supersedes all others, is to look less like me and more like him everyday. While knitting my heart to him is the most important thing in my life, I believe that marriage is second. It is the second most important relationship in my life, and more than any other relationship, it inherently, by its nature, has the power to show Christ to an unbelieving world. God didn't necessarily plan for me to marry Garrett (although I believe in his omniscience). God's plan includes me glorifying him with my life, and thus my marriage. It was God's plan that, should I choose to marry (and again, he knew I would), that my marriage would preach the gospel.

So what makes a marriage work if I'm not bound to my husband by the cosmic threads of the universe, or more, if God didn't create us with each other in mind and his power alone keeps us together?

More than just a simple decision to continue loving (which I'm sure veterans of marriage can tell you is definitely not as easy as it sounds), I believe that marriage is about willingness to meet one another's deepest needs. Garrett and I are reading a book entitled His Needs, Her Needs by Willard Harley. In his book, he writes the following:

We think the dynamics of a good marriage depend on some mysterious blend of the "right" people. Or if a marriage turns out badly, we call the two people "wrong" for each other. While it's true that two inherently incompatible people might marry, it's unusual. More frequently, marital breakups occur when one or both partners lack the skills or awareness to meet each other's emotional needs. More often than not, being right or wrong for someone depends not on some mysterious compatibility quotient, but on how willing and able you are to meet that someone's needs.

Seems pretty unromantic, right? But God's promises don't include a lifetime of romance. After all, the Greek word for romantic love doesn't even appear in the Bible. That doesn't mean we'll never have it; it simply means our joy is not dependent upon it, and neither is the success of our marriages.

If we rely on the feelings of love to sustain love, we will be sorely disappointed. If we expect that God will bring along the right person who is a perfect blend of all the happy things we enjoy and is void of all the habits we abhor, we will be sorely disappointed. But if we recognize that marriage is an opportunity to choose to love like Christ loves, to decide to sacrifice like Christ sacrificed, and to allow ourselves to be made more like him, I bet there will be a revolution in the way marriages function. If we are more committed to serving our spouses and meeting their needs and less demanding that we are served and our needs met, maybe marriage will become less of a fast food menu, where you try one thing and if it doesn't work, order differently next time, and more of a lifelong classroom in which we learn, grow, and change. Who knows - maybe it could happen. Like I said in my last post,  I don't know much, but I sure hope for a lot.

Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

-Eph 3:20-21

a real life look at marriage, two months in

Marriage.

It's great. I mean, really great. Being with my best friend (no more long distance!) everyday is incredible. And, since it's the newest thing in my life, it makes sense for me to write about it.

Garrett and I are 61 days married. Sometimes that feels like a long time - like I can hardly remember what it was like when we weren't husband and wife. I look back at pictures from March, April, and early May (we wed on May 18), and they feel like distant memories. Isn't that STRANGE? It feels strange to me. Some moments I find myself almost pinching my arm, thinking, "Can this be real?! I'm married!" After all, I went from a one person unit to a two person family in the span of a 30 minute ceremony. Other times, I find myself mourning my singleness. That probably sounds weird from a newlywed, so I'll elaborate. I'm not unhappy that I'm no longer single. I married the love of my life, God ordained our union, and we are one, body and soul - WOW! However, I sometimes miss just hanging out with my girlfriends, or going on spur-of-the-moment road trips, or staying up late, or coming home and chatting with my roomies. Garrett can chat, but there's just something different about deep emotional talks with girls, and "deep emotional" talks with boys :)

A lot of people have asked me, "How's married life?!" I think the answer they want to hear is, "It's AMAZING! ABSOLUTELY BLISSFUL!" And while there are moments that I feel that way, the truth is, more often than not, I don't. The real answer, the one you don't hear very often, although I'd venture to say many newlyweds have felt this at some moment in time, is, "It's a hard, challenging, frustrating, testing, what-have-I-gotten-myself-into kind of relationship, but absolutely worth it." Can I get an amen??

I'm not pretending to be a relationship or marriage expert - quite the contrary! I'm a novice. I've made a lot of mistakes, and I'm only 2 months in! However, I like to learn, and do so as quickly as I can, so after 8 weeks and 5 days, this is a snapshot of a few things I have learned that I really wish someone had told me:

1. You still need same-gender time.

I knew I would still spend time with my girlfriends, you know, just being girls. What I didn't realize was that I would NEED this time. Part of me figured since Garrett made me so happy before we were married, when we only saw each other once a month or so, I wouldn't crave time with anyone else. After all, he's my spouse, right? My soulmate? So shouldn't I be completely content being with him and only him, forever? Nope. When I first started feeling this, I thought I was broken. But thankfully, the Lord soothed my anxieties and reminded me that He's the only one, in and of himself, that can bring me satisfaction. He created me to be VERY relational, thriving on time with people. Therefore, limiting myself to one person, albeit my husband and closest human companion, is still not how he made me to function.

2. Your life is pretty much the same (except it isn't).
Before I knew that I was going to marry Garrett, I always imagined marriage as this fuzzy thing that would happen sometime in the future, and I would have it all together, and we would wake up laughing in the morning, cling our coffee cups at breakfast with a sparkle in our teeth, and cook a gourmet dinner together every night, with wine and roses and fancy clothes. Reality check. When morning comes, I still want to hit the snooze button for the seventh time, breakfast may or may not come with a side of stress (depending on the day's responsibilities), and while dinner might be tasty, there's always a pile of dishes to be washed afterwards. Life doesn't magically become perfect when you get married. The same mess that was there before is still there - except now, it's doubled. Now instead of the dishes once a week, we do them every other day. And oh, the laundry! No, life carries on as normal, and now I have someone else's needs to be concerned with. It's no longer just about me. Now, my mess is his mess, and vice versa. And for this thing to work, his needs must be more important to me than mine. It's a difficult balance to master - I'm hoping I get there someday.

3. Your sex life is not like the movies.

Yes, I'm going to write about sex on my blog's maiden voyage. Nobody said this to me before, though, and I wish someone had. So I'm talking about it. No, sex is not like the movies. And sure, I'd heard that, but nobody told me HOW it isn't like the movies, so I was still thrown for a loop. Most everything I thought about being intimate was not quite right. Your clothes don't magically fall off. You aren't perfectly under the covers. And chances are, if you're a virgin when you marry, like I was, it won't be seamless and easy. There's no need for a lot of detail, but let's just say it took me a while to get the hang of. And that's okay! It's all new and still very exciting. I am SO glad that I waited to be intimate with only my husband.

Along those same lines...

4. Marriage is not just about having sex.
I think it's natural for most people who save themselves for marriage to believe (consciously or subconsciously) that marriage looks like 24/7 physical intimacy. But that's just not true. Maybe there are some couples who are more like rabbits than humans, but for us, it's not the case. Although this is the part of our relationship that has changed most drastically (from not doing to doing) it is not the focal point of our marriage. I thought it would be. After all, it's one of the hotter topics in the days and weeks leading up to the wedding, especially among friends who also saved or are saving themselves. And while it's absolutely wonderful, it's not everything.

5. You MUST have individual time with the Lord.
This is perhaps the most critical point I'm going to make. Going into marriage, I had this idea that each morning, as a couple, we would devote our first fruits of the day to God together and pray together. I thought in doing so, we would grow closer to the Lord than ever before. We've done that, fairly consistently so far, but after a few weeks my cup began to feel dry. I felt distant from the Lord, not closer, and I couldn't figure out why. I noticed that Satan began attacking me, and hard, in areas where he really loves to get in my ear. And yet, through the counsel of wise friends, God showed me that he still wants ME, not just US. He wants to be alone with me, as often as I will offer my time to him. And doing that has made all the difference in the world. I find that now, I understand even more the greatness of the love God has for me, just by experiencing marriage. The more time I spend faithfully with God, allowing him to love me and teach me and change me, the better I am at being a wife to Garrett. I am excited to see how, as my marriage to Garrett grows and matures, my relationship with my Father and Creator will be deepened and strengthened, and vice versa.

So that's it. After such a short time, and such little experience, God has been so good and so faithful to teach me things I didn't know before, to show me how to navigate through such unfamiliar territory. Maybe some of you have experienced, or are experiencing, similar moments or revelations. There are so many things that I still don't know, and even more that I don't even know that I don't know. Of a few things I'm certain: God loves me and I am his, and Garrett loves me and we are God's.