Marriage Matters

This is what I’ve learned about marriage in my 13 years as a spouse.
It isn’t always easy. 

You take two people from entirely different backgrounds and place them into a home together. Each has a different job, social circle, friends, and hobbies before entering each other’s orbit. You have two separate lives coming into one. That is supposed to be picture-perfect and run smoothly.
According to the world, yes. 

The world tells us it should be easy, and if it’s not…
Well, if it’s not perfect you can just try again. The world will tell you it’s okay, give up, go and find that person that it will be easy with. They’re out there. You just haven’t found your “soulmate” yet. 

No matter the tries, the equation stays the same: two different people and too many unknown factors to solve this “perfect” puzzle. Hot tip, marriage isn’t a math problem to solve. It’s a life to build together. I’m not talking about as roommates, or best buddies, but as two who’ve become one flesh (Genesis 2:24).

Marriage is a choice. You’ve got to learn to be a unit. It’s a daily commitment. Because we are two separate people coming together to build one life, it won’t always feel natural, or come easy.
Instead of seeing this as failure or not being picture-perfect, to the point we should give up. We should instead want to strive to commit, to put in the effort, to show up, to say “I chose you, and I will daily choose you.” 

Two things have profoundly impacted my marriage. 

Communication with our Spouse

The first is challenging but rewarding. Communication is the key to any relationship, especially with your spouse.

Because we are two entirely different people, we communicate in two entirely different ways, shocking. Even 13 years into our marriage we still have moments of miscommunication.

Yesterday Jason said, “You wrote this grocery list in Emily speak.” He went over it with me before heading to the store and wrote it his way. Had he not he would have missed some key things I wanted. I would have ended up disappointed when he came home without them. I would have taken my own mistakes out on him, which wouldn’t have been fair.

Communication has taken years to work on, more accurately, learning how one another speaks. It’s something we should never give up learning about one another. Our communication style varies during different parts of our days, weeks, months, and sometimes even seasonally. Our communication can even change with our moods. 

Often pride is something that blocks our communicative airways. Let’s face it, we all think we are pretty close to perfect. Therefore, our spouse should be the same. I’ve been the wife who gets annoyed with all of my husband’s “shortcomings” and I get annoyed when he can’t just magically get on my level of expectations…when he can’t follow my ADD train of thoughts and emotions, when he says he will do something and then doesn’t…you know the list. Your list might look slightly different, but we all have them: A spousal list. Our spouse probably has one for us too. 

How we communicate with our spouse matters. It matters for both hearts involved. It matters when children are involved and watching the way their parents interact. This is something they will carry into their relationships as they grow.

Communication with my spouse that is healthy looks like this:
Compromising.
Speaking to one another from a place of love and understanding.
Being open to feedback.
Forgiving and giving grace. 

Communication with God

This brings me to the second thing that has impacted my marriage. Prayer. Take it to prayer. Take that prideful list, and talk to God about it. Take all of those prideful thoughts and work it out with God. Lashing out at our spouse because they don’t measure up to the version we have of them in our head, is something the devil would have us do. He riles us up just to watch us tear each other apart.

We need to communicate with God when we’ve got things to work out with our spouse. Those prideful or annoyed thoughts…address the things driving you nuts. Pray about the things that you’d like to see changed. Likewise, pray about the desires you have for your husband’s future.

For his walk with the Lord…Take it to God. 

Don’t be surprised if you notice God changing you as well. 

Sometimes our thoughts and attitudes towards a situation need as much change as the situation does. Talking to God about it frees us to be kind to our spouses. To treat them with love and respect rather than grumbles and grouchitude.

I recognize that it’s easier said than done. God is handling it. Maybe God answers and you bring it back up with your spouse with the new light. Or maybe God’s handled it a different way altogether and it’s no longer of importance. 

Communicating with our spouse should never come from a prideful, worldly place. It should come from a place overflowing with pride for the person standing in front of you. The person gifted to you by God was created uniquely by God for a purpose. These two kinds of communication will build a firm foundation for a marriage that matters.

Your marriage, matters! 

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