(Newly) Married Wisdom #2

The last time I posted about what I've learned about marriage, I was only three months into it...hard to believe we are hitting our one-year anniversary in just under a week!!

As you can guess, I've learned a lot since that last post. I'm beginning to understand the meaning of "you learn something new everyday."

Without further ado, I give you my newest discoveries in the magical land of matrimony!

1)Perspective and response: a recipe for success! If I had to name one of the most valuable things I've learned thus far, it would be that your perspective of circumstances and the responses you have in them is one of the most important components to a strong marriage and strong character, and a successful life in general. I think it's obvious that marriage is not always rainbows and unicorns and dancing lollipops, so what do we do when things are less than desirable? When our spouses do something that makes our blood boil or our heart break a little bit? 

I gotta be honest and say that it took me a fair amount of time to put away my pride at how it's my "right" to react dramatically and without thinking if my husband did something to hurt me or aggravate me, and learn the power of a kind and loving response no matter what (still working on it...).

I was under the notion that because I was a female, I had permission to be overly moody, dramatic and emotional, and my husband just had to suck it up and deal with it because well, I'm a woman and that's how we women are! I could not have been more wrong. Why? Because moodiness and emotions are no excuse when it comes to loving like Jesus loved! Like, seriously: the man was tortured and died on a cross and He didn't complain once! Last time I checked, we are ALL called to follow his example, not just the dudes!

There's a Proverb that says "a fool expresses all of their emotions, but a wise person controls them." God showed this scripture to me during a time I was being particularly "difficult" and as a result was hurting my husband's feelings with my reckless outbursts and not thinking before I spoke. Holding your tongue is not easy, but man does it pay off in the midst of an argument! I've found that my husband excels in this area and I've got much more to learn about responding in love than I thought!

Keeping heavenly perspective is HUGE in marriage. It is easy in the midst of a rough situation or a bad day or an argument with your other half to see things negatively, to feel disappointed and downcast and discouraged. But if you change your perspective and simply look at the situation and/or your spouse with God's eyes, everything changes!

And wanna know something really cool? When your perspective shifts so do your words and actions! It becomes far easier to respond in love and gentleness in every situation when you are no longer looking at the glass as half empty and choose to see it as half full, instead. Nifty how that works, isn't it? This might be something you're saying: "well, duh!" but it's one thing to know it and another thing to get in the nitty-gritty of life, put your money where your mouth is and actually walk it out.

Along with having heavenly perspective, selfishness needs to take a back seat and we need to look from our spouse's perspective. I can't tell you how many arguments we've gotten in where it was full of "I feel, I need, I want," instead of putting myself in his shoes and seeing from where he stands. Selflessness is contingent on a godly perspective. It's not possible to remain in a constant state of selflessness without seeing things from the perspective of love! And it's not possible to have a loving response if we don't have a loving perspective. 

I feel like learning to not be selfish is a lifelong process and I never realized how selfish I could be until I got married!


2) Holiness over happiness. This is HUGE, guys. So many people, in the church especially, have this misconception that the prime focus of marriage is to find someone to keep you happy. Would you call me a Scrooge if I said they were wrong? Well then bah-humbug! If you're looking to your spouse to be your source of happiness, you will never be satisfied. I noticed when I put expectation on my husband to love me "perfectly" 100% of the time and to spend every waking moment enamored with his undying love for me, I not only found myself disappointed all the time by every opportunity that went by that he didn't take to be gushy and poetic, but I made him feel like an awful failure of a spouse. Really, Hali! No one is capable of that sort of attitude 24/7!

I was setting a standard no human being could ever meet. While marriage does entail those things and God does desire for us to have a marriage full of passion and romance, the truth is that only Jesus can satisfy those desires 100% of the time without ever letting us down.

I firmly believe that God allows circumstances to arise where our spouses fall short of our expectations to remind us who our true source of love is, and that's Him! I can recall many times where I found myself so "happy" in my flesh, so comfortable with my husband and my circumstance, that I was starting to get my main fill from Ian and stopped going to God for His affections. And let me tell you, everything can be absolutely wonderful with your husband and you still won't feel whole on the inside if your primary source of love isn't coming from God.

All that to say: God is far more concerned with you becoming more like Him than you becoming more comfortable. You know that whole spiel I gave in the last marriage post about iron sharpening iron? Well ladies and gents, there you have the reason for marriage! (Of course God wants us to be happy! But having true joy in your spirit that doesn't depend on circumstances and being happy in your flesh because everything is hunky-dory are two totally different things, and one is far more valuable than the other, not to mention it is available while you go through the rough stuff!) So don't get disillusioned if you find yourself having days where you're not-so-happily-married so to speak. Growth never happens without a little bit of hardship! After all, a tree doesn't grow if there's no pressure on the seed, right?

I once heard a quote that said, "If you want to follow Jesus with your whole heart, stay single. But if you want to become more like Jesus, get married." That pretty much nails it.


3)What happens when we're both right? This is a dilemma I've found myself and my husband in quite a few times in the midst of a disagreement. Sometimes, we are both justified in our argument against the other person. But what I've noticed is that when we are both right about something, 100% of the time we are also both wrong about something. Ha! Another "duh" moment. But trust me, it needs reminding in the midst of a disagreement!

So how do you resolve an issue when both sides are justified and have valid arguments?

I remember one time God reprimanded me when I was whining to him about how I was right and Ian was wrong, how I am justified to be angry because I was right, I, I, I, I!

He stopped me and said, "Why don't you think about what you did wrong instead of what he did wrong?" That stopped me in my tracks. I was pointing out the speck in Ian's eye, all the while I had a huge log in my own!

True humility does not get hung up on being wronged. Rather, humility prompts us to take a look at ourselves and see what areas we need to grow in before pointing the finger at someone else. 


Even more than revealing my pride, it revealed to me my mistrust. Fear rose up in me that God wouldn't call him out on what he did wrong and so I had to. I realized how little I trusted God with the details of my marriage because I felt I had to control the situation. So untrue!

As with everything else that God does, it makes no sense to our logic to react in humility when we are wronged, but it yields good fruit! Like the proverb says, "A kind word turns away anger." Being humble and meek will get you the apology you want, not being prideful and angry! I have seen this time and time again, that when I am the first to apologize, it softens my husband's heart towards me and he will apologize for his wrongs, as well (and vise versa!).

However, even in the event that our spouse doesn't apologize, we are still called to humility (now this is a hard one...)! Ultimately, God's goal is to shape your character, regardless of whether your spouse is allowing Him to shape theirs. Any opportunity to come low and humble ourselves is an opportunity to become more like Christ and get closer to Him. Why let that be stolen from us because we are all bent out of shape and offended by our husband or wife? God uses ALL things for our good, so if your husband or wife is being a jerk, be thankful that it's another chance to practice what we preach and look more like our God! That's why we're married, in the first place! Remember? :)



I'm sure I could dredge up more to share, but we'll save that for another time. Have anything to add? Comments are always welcome! :)


<3Hali

"Can you see me now? Gooooood."

You know what, Shel? You were on to something with this poem. And I'm not being biased just because he is my all-time favorite poet (as if I read that much poetry, anyway...), it's because it speaks so precisely of what has been on my heart the past couple of weeks.

In the spirit of this post, I'm just going to cut right to the chase, no ruffles or frills or unnecessary fluff...

Transparency.  Let's talk about.


September marks 6 months of marriage to my fantastic amazing husband; I love him so much! But the past couple of weeks have been anything but fantastic and amazing and I have not loved them so much. In fact, they have straight up sucked. I realize that rough days and weeks (hopefully that doesn't extend to "months") in marriage are inevitable. Why? Because it's life and life isn't always rosy and happy and easy-going... add another human being to the mix who also has a life that isn't always rosy and happy and easy-going, and you've got a married life that isn't always rosy and happy and easy-going. 

No surprises, there.

But what did take me by surprise was the way I felt as I began to encounter challenges as a new wife: "I am alone in this and no one understands."

I have never been one to believe I'm alone. Why now? I asked myself.  Why, all of a sudden, do I feel like there is no one who can relate and no one who has been through this before me?

Then I remembered the times that I didn't feel alone or misunderstood. What was the key ingredient? People were transparent with me.

Looking back on my engagement, I remember a whole lot of people being thrilled for me, a whole lot of congratulating and excitement and encouragement. But what I don't remember was a whole lot of people who have gone before me pulling me to the side and saying, "Hey, this is the not-so-fun stuff that you're probably going to encounter your first year, and this is how you deal with it." 

Of course, thanks to every cutesy generic sermon on marriage I've ever heard, I was well prepared for some of the more, er...."intense" marital disputes that would arise, like when he leaves the toilet seat up and the cap off the toothpaste, or when I like to sleep with the door closed and he likes it opened (*eye roll*). 

But what about the times he doesn't steward my heart properly and hurts my feelings? What about the times I am irritable and say mean things that cut him down? What about all the painful, difficult, frustrating things that happen in the process of learning how to become a loving husband and a respectful wife that the Word tells us to be? Where were all the words of wisdom on that?

A lack of transparency fosters isolation and hopelessness.

And that's how I felt; isolated and hopeless. Like the girl in the poem, my skin was a violent shade of blue and no one else's was. Obviously what I was going through wasn't normal or okay because no one told me that they've gone through this. Something was surely wrong with us!

I decided to remove the mask and let others see what was going on in my life. As I began to share my struggles with other newlywed friends, I discovered something: I was not alone. Not only was I not alone, but I discovered that there was nothing wrong with my marriage. In fact, we were totally normal!  Their faces were just as blue as mine.

While this revelation set me free from comparing us to other "perfect" marriages and of worrying that something was gravely wrong in ours, it also set a righteous indignation ablaze in my heart.

People of God, it's time to drop the fear of being judged by others, the fear of being hurt in a place of vulnerability, fear of damaging our reputation or having our ego bruised, and just be open: Our transparency will set others free! 

When we wear a mask of "perfection," we unknowingly set others up for failure by showing them a standard they can't meet, which causes hopelessness, disillusionment, disappointment, and discouragement.  But when we open ourselves up to others, we give them the courage to remove their mask and begin to walk out their own personal process with confidence and hope, instead of the crippling fear of not being perfect. 


Transparency removes all barriers to intimacy. It allows trust to bloom into real relationships. And isn't that really what this whole life is about? Isn't unity the content of Jesus' last prayer for the church before he was crucified? Fear of sharing what's really going on behind closed doors only keeps us divided and scared. But we are called to carry each other's burdens. We are instructed to confess our junk to each other because we were never meant to do any of this alone. How are we supposed to help each other go higher if we are too afraid to open up and give people a glimpse into our lives? How is anyone going to know they aren't alone in their trials and sufferings if we don't show them that they aren't? 

Obviously, I was writing from the perspective of marriage. But this concept can be applied across the board. Do not be afraid to be real with someone because you may just be the answer to their prayers. 


One last note: Transparency is a two-way street. We can't expect someone to open up to us if we are clamming up, ourselves. And we can't expect everyone to spill their guts out at our feet without casting aside our pride and coming in humility to seek wisdom from them, honoring them for the trail they've blazed before us. In certain respects, I was just as guilty for not seeking out advice as others were for not freely giving it. 




Having said that, I want to close this post, from one newlywed to others who are in the same boat or about to be, by saying what I wish others had said to me:

There are going to be times when your husband fails to love you well. 

It's okay, he is learning! 

There are going to be times when you fail to treat him respectfully.

It's okay, you are learning!

You are going to hurt each other and dishonor each other. He is going to be insensitive and you are going to be annoyingly over-sensitive. He is going to misunderstand your feminine heart and you are going to misunderstand his masculine spirit. There's going to be miscommunications and misunderstandings, wrongful assumptions and false conclusions. You are both going to be selfish and self-serving. You are going to disagree and argue, you are going to get frustrated and annoyed. 

Neither of you are going to "get it" right away.

...and it's okay. 

It's normal.

There is nothing wrong with you or him or your marriage.

   And most of all, don't despise the process because that is when you become more like Jesus. 

"Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails."

-1 Corinthians 13:7-8

<3 Hali

Expectations: Not for the Faint of Heart

I've heard it said, "If you don't have expectations, you won't be disappointed when they're not met." As an optimist and an idealist, I never liked this way of thinking. And honestly, not subscribing to it has always done me good.

But let's get real for a second; it's simply impossible to go through life without experiencing the disappointment of having our hopes dashed at some point, even when we put our hope in the proper place.  So how do we reconcile unmet expectations with a God that says He'll never let us down?

Like any normal female with a dream in her heart would do, I've spent much of my 9 years of knowing my now-husband, fantasizing about my life with him as a married couple. One of my deepest desires was to take him to the place that I grew up, my most favorite place in the entire world. Summer after Summer that he could not go there with me and my family, I would dream of the day when it would happen, conjuring up beautiful mental images of us walking hand-in-hand down the beach, star-gazing at night, sailing on the bay. My heart would literally hurt while I dreamt of the day it would finally become a reality.

After so many years of waiting, I was finally able to bring him with me this year in our first Summer as husband and wife! Could the timing have been any more perfect? I was simply beside myself. Finally my dreams were coming true!

In the week before our trip, God kept bringing to mind the lyrics of the Andrew Ehrenzeller song that I picked to be sung during our wedding ceremony: 

"So I set my love upon you, no expectation, only revelation..."

(Looking back at my 5 months of marriage, the irony and humor of my song choice is not lost on me, but that's another dozen blogs for another time...)

Going into this trip, I had extremely high expectations. After all, I have had years to dream and fantasize, to plan out my perfect scenario for every situation while on this vacation. However, from the moment we woke up to go to the airport, nothing was going the way I had "planned." Dumb little things that went wrong were like fatal blows to my dream. By the time we landed at our destination, I was extremely irate, disappointed, and quite honestly, hurt with God. Ian picked up on it right away and wasted no time reprimanding me in love: 

"Don't let the fact that things aren't going exactly as you thought, steal your joy."

Of course as any heart-sick individual would do at the loss of a perfect plan, I didn't heed his words right away and let a couple of precious days go by feeling upset, let down, and disillusioned as each hour yielded different results than I expected of this long-awaited dream.

"God, don't you tell us to expect great things? Don't you tell us that you're a good Daddy who wants to give us the desires of our heart? What happened, here?!" 

And there it was again, the words sang over my marriage:

"...no expectation, only revelation..."

And then I realized my fault: I put expectation in my own ideas of perfection, rather than putting expectation first and foremost in the character of God to fulfill dreams in His perfection! It's so vital that we don't jump ahead of God, assume that we know how He is going to do something, and then build our hope upon it. That is a sure-fire way to construct a rickety foundation that will crumble under the weight of the slightest disappointment! 

I've heard so many times to "come to God expecting": expect Him to move in a mighty way, expect Him to answer you, expect Him to be there in a time of need, expect Him to show up.

Are these bad things to hope in? Of course, not! But what I've found that I do (and I'm sure I'm not the only one guilty of this) is I will go that teensy little step further and--sometimes unconsciously--put my hope in what I think His methods will be and expect everything to happen just as I imagine. Then when things don't go the way I expected I am left feeling let down, like God didn't come through on what He promised.

"...only revelation." 

What we need is not expectation, but revelation, a.k.a perspective. Perspective to see things as God sees them and not as we see them, perspective to remember that His ways are not our ways and His thoughts are not our thoughts (Isaiah 55:8), that we must not lean on our own understanding, but trust that He knows what He's doing (Proverbs 3:5-6). It's easy to think that everything has gone wrong when they didn't go the way we wanted them to, but that hardly means God didn't make good on His promise; it means He did it HIS way, not ours, and we should ask for revelation to see beyond what things appear to be on the surface.

Bottom line: We will always risk being disappointed if we are more hopeful in His methods than in His character; His methods are often a mystery and beyond our understanding, but His character is clear and it never changes.

"Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but desire fulfilled is a tree of life." (Proverbs 13:12) The Hebrew word for "deferred" means "delayed" and the Hebrew word for "fulfilled" is "come, arrive." I finally see this verse in light of Jesus: while we may have to wait while the fulfillment of our dreams is delayed, we will never have to wait for access to Jesus and the fulfillment we can find in Him...it has already arrived! Because of this, our hearts will never be sick and our desire always fulfilled when our hope is exclusively in Him: Not what He can do, will do, or has done in lieu of our heart's desires, but simply in who He is!



In hind sight, the fact that my dream didn't pan out exactly as I had always imagined was a good thing--more than a good thing, it was a great thing. I would not have experienced what I had and realized what I did had things gone any differently. Once I gained revelatory perspective and looked past my expectations, I was able to take joy in my dream, again. I ditched the disappointment and embraced the moment, and while it didn't outwardly appear to be my version of perfect, I chose to enjoy it and it was amazing.



God has known the deepest desires of my heart longer than I have. He was aware of them developing for 9 years and He knew how I longed for their culmination. I am no special case; God sees your heart, as well. Have you been disappointed lately by circumstances taking an unexpected and unwanted turn? Have you had great expectations only to find yourself disillusioned with their outcome? Release your expectations and receive His revelation! Putting hope in Him will not disappoint.



"And this hope will not lead to disappointment..." - Romans 5:5



<3 Hali

(Newly) Married Wisdom

I'll admit it; I used to inwardly roll my eyes when someone who was recently married tried to give me marital advice. I mean, how much wisdom can you really gain and pass on in just the first few months of marriage?

As it turns out, a heck of a lot!

Now, about 3 1/2 months into it, I've honestly gained more understanding on various topics in this short time than I have in years of being single. You might be thinking that I'm over-exaggerating, but the thing is that when you're single you aren't with someone all  the time. You aren't forced to be refined 24/7, or have your virtues tested every day, all day. When you are one with another human being, you can no longer avoid confronting your imperfections and shortcomings; you are forced to deal with them head-on. As someone wise said to me just last week, "Marriage really is the Great Sanctifier."

Isn't God's marital design just fabulous? (if you sense partial sarcasm, you've sensed correctly).


So, in the spirit of having my eyes opened to so many new things, I wanted to share just a couple of the top revelations I've gotten thus far from being married.


1) Comparison is the devil...
Comparison. This ugly word will often disguise itself as "getting wisdom" from other married couples, but man I've gotta tell you, that line is super thin. Sometimes you walk multiple paces over it and don't even realize until you're sinking into a dark spiral of unjustified depression because you saw another married couple reading a book on marriage together, and you certainly aren't doing that; well, there must be something wrong with my marriage if we aren't having our very own book-reading duet going on!

What I was losing sight of is the fact that God made us all unique individuals with unique personalities and callings, so why on Earth would He expect our marriages to all look the same? If marriage is really an allegory of our relationship to Jesus, then all of our marriages should look just as different as our personal relationship with Him. I'm not saying we shouldn't learn from those who are also walking this thing out, but we certainly shouldn't hold them as our standard of what our own marriage should look like. If love is our standard, we will always be successful. 


Comparison breeds all sorts of nastiness that I noticed started to crop up in my life: It made me ungrateful for what I have, it caused me to be bitter and judgmental of my husband, it made me jealous of what other people had (or appeared to have on the outside), and it made me feel hopeless that I could ever achieve the "right" marriage. This is all rotten fruit that you do not want growing in your relationship with your spouse and it all started because I stopped focusing on my marriage and what God was saying for us, and started focusing on other people's marriages and what God was saying for them. This is why it's so important to scrap the compare-and-contrast mentality and focus on what God says about your union. No one is quite like you or your spouse and together you make one married ball of uniqueness! Comparison is not worth forfeiting your one-of-a-kind destiny.

My advice? DON'T DO IT!


2)A little leaven leavens the whole lump...
Honestly, I have to say that I was totally blind-sided by the ugliness that could come out of me. I thought I had that whole "love is patient, love is kind" thing down pretty solid... I learned otherwise when I saw how easy it was to snap at Ian when I was aggravated, even if it had nothing to do with him. I would say things that I couldn't believe were coming out of my mouth and do things that I would never have thought I'd ever do. When I asked God what the deal was, He showed me that when you become one with someone, they take on all that you are and everything you have. They are literally an extension of you, so all of those things that were so easy to push down when you were single are no longer able to stay hidden; When you are one with another person, all that you do and don't do now affects them as much as it affects you.

As I've previously mentioned, when you're single you don't have to deal with your problems if you don't want to; it's all too easy to go in your room and shut the door and have no one there to provoke all of your junk to rise to the surface. As an individual person, you don't have to answer to anyone if you don't want to. You can even argue your own brain into denial if you start to see things inside of yourself that you don't like and don't want to address. But when you become one with someone, everything that is yours becomes theirs and suddenly, you can't pretend that your issues don't need to be dealt with because they take a toll on your spouse and hurt them just as much as they hurt you; this is 1 Corinthians 5:6-7 on the micro level.

Talk about motivation to clean house!

I've realized that I have a lot more to work on that I thought. It's like there were things lying dormant, awaiting an "I do" to awaken them, and awaken they did! But thankfully, when a marriage is built on the foundation of God's love, you find the grace to help each other work through these unsightly blemishes on the face of your character and reveal the beautiful redeemed nature of the one you love.


3)Daily servings of humble pie...
Receiving correction from God can be a hard thing. But receiving correction from another imperfect human being is on a whole other level of "hard."

Because of that whole "you can't avoid your issues" thing I mentioned earlier, it's inevitable that your shortcomings are going to show. Sometimes, we don't have the insight or even the courage to deal with them, which is where I've learned your spouse comes in. I believe that just as Jesus refines us through our marriage to Him, our spouse refines us through their marriage to us. God uses them to reveal the things in us that may not be so pretty while also offering us their hand to help wipe off the grime. However, it's so easy to reject their help when you look and see their own grime that needs wiping.

There have been quite a few times when Ian has lovingly pointed out areas that I need to work on and I have quite unlovingly rejected his helpful advances in lieu of his own imperfection. I was quick to throw at him the things that he did wrong instead of simply humbling myself and receiving the truth of what he was speaking.

True humility doesn't reject truth based on someone else's imperfection, but embraces truth based on God's perfection working through them. 


Another major thing that I've learned to humble myself in is that I am not always right. You may be saying, "Well, duh!" but it's not that I never thought I could be wrong, it's that when it comes to the things of God, I've never had to allow anyone else to tell me what God is saying for my own life. As many married coupled can attest to, this changes when you're married: you become a team and it's no longer about your own revelation for your own individual life, but revelation from both about your life as one. For someone like me who is used to a one-on-one relationship with Holy Spirit that involves no one else but the two of us, it can be a hard pill to swallow that God will often speak to my husband about our life together, not just to me.

The old independent and single Hali used to find this notion annoying, even a tad insulting. But now that I've seen the fruit of this, it's a great set-up! Nothing builds trust in your husband quite like seeing that he is hearing from the Lord and wanting to lead you in the right direction.

There are times when Ian would share what he saw and it was contrary to what I felt I was seeing. Pride would rise up and I'd shut him down, because I thought I always know what's best... Clearly, this mentality has a very short shelf life, and I am constantly humbled by how selfish and mistrusting I can be.

Humble pie tastes bitter at first, but leaves a great aftertaste. I plan to keep it as a staple food in my house.



Every day, I'm learning more about myself, my husband, and God. But for now, this is plenty to chew on!


So, what's your take? If you're married, can you testify to any of this? If you're single, does any of this resonate with what you expect of marriage?

I'd love to hear your thoughts!