Marriage... whoever said they are perfect were lying. They are a lot of work sometimes. Everyone has their own opinion, and I really enjoy being married. Ana's input in invaluable to me and I love that she is by my side through it all. But there are those days that can get rough sometimes. (I'm not posting this because today was rough or that we have issues often. I'm just stating a fact) One thing I believe those of us who are married have to realize is that there are two of us, but we are one. There are two brains and they don't always see things the same way, but we work together. There is one emotion that can contradict the other, but we're striving for the same thing.
All of us have dreams of marrying the perfect spouse. We contain within ourselves our picture of the ideal and when things don't go our way we feel our dreams have been shattered. We've been let down and they aren't ever supposed to do that. Resentment builds up and we even think they did it on purpose. We dwell on it and eventually believe that they actually did do it on purpose. But instead of bringing it up when it happens we hold on to it and the bitterness eats us up on the inside. The more we dwell on it the more we realize that nothing they do is right. Our solution is to try and change them and even manipulate them into seeing things our way to prove our point.
Have we forgotten something? Like, our spouse is a human being? My wife is different than me and has been created different and unique. I cannot try to change her! What God has made her to be is how she is supposed to be: different from me. Anyone who looks to their spouse for complete fulfillment is going to be let down every time. My wife and I found that true fulfillment only comes from the Lord. Having our relationship built on Him as our foundation helps us see and come to the point of forgiveness and reconciliation. I'm not saying that we have everything figured out, but I can tell you from experience that keeping God as our focal point in our relationship has helped us through the tough stuff.
I'm going to steal this thought from someone else. You've heard Jesus say, "how can you say to one man, 'Let me remove the speck from your eye' without paying attention to the log in your own eye? First remove the log in your own eye then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye." I think Jesus was talking about relationships in general. One thing someone pointed out to me is that the "speck" in someone else's eye is merely a reflection of the log in your own. Our own stupid pride keeps us from seeing it. If we can remove the log from our eye, the speck in someone else's will be gone. The speck in their eye becomes less of an irritant in ours. So truly, our dissatisfaction with our spouse is stimulated from a dissatisfaction with ourselves. That's hard to swallow...
I beg you, if there is something that needs to be straightened up between you and your husband or wife, look in the mirror first, put yourself in their shoes, clean out your own eye and go make things right! The first step is to pray and ask God to show you what you don't see, to get yourself out of the way (nobody can expect their life to center around themselves once they are married). Then clean house. Then go reconcile and forgive.
I really hope this was an encouragement to those who know that marriage can sometimes be difficult. This lesson I've learned from a conference my wife and I went to has helped us see that it's okay for the other to be different and understand that God made them that way. We've decided that no matter how bad things might get between us divorce (the "d" word) will never be an option. I hope you can and will make the same commitment to each other. It's work and it's worth it.
