Tuesday, March 3, 2015

no thing more beautiful.

A few days ago, my husband and I celebrated 6 months of being married. By celebrated I mean we have both had a respiratory infection and cough so we went to church and then Sam ate leftover pizza, I ate a tuna sandwich, we watched TV on the couch while eating BlueBell ice-cream and went to bed at 9:15.

We've had quite a ride so far.. it's been an eventful half a year. We adopted two puppies, we survived high school football season, I dropped my hours at work to be home more, we found out on our 3 month anniversary we are pregnant! We celebrated our first Christmas without our families,  I went back to work full time on day shift, we survived Freedom Weekend (our biggest student event of the year), we spent a few days in the third world visiting my family in Haiti swimming in the ocean in 90 degree weather and then endured a few snow days at home together back in Texas.

We have learned each other well.. Sam has learned how to sleep with my snoring (mostly), I've learned what Sam likes on his salads. We have learned how to hurt each other's feelings and how to apologize when we aren't our best. We've also learned how to encourage each other better and how to be each other's biggest fan. We have learned compromise and how to pick the important battles. We have laughed so much, and both cried some too.

On our six month anniversary, we laid in bed with the lights out, dogs asleep in crates in the floor, the humidifier buzzing so I can breathe while my stomach grows it seems every night. My husband snuggled in to my neck and I could feel his breath on my skin, like he does every night. After a few seconds of silence, I whispered, "Are you sleepy?" (I ask this every other night at least). He whispered back a quiet "no."

I thought for a few minutes, and then posed the question, "Tell me something you've learned since we got married. About life or about yourself or about me, anything. Just something you learned."

He was quiet in thought and then he said, "You tell me yours first." He knows me well.

I decided on the thing that I feel I have learned most recently and explained it to him like this:

I have always heard people say that when you get married, you don't start over with a new life but instead everything in your past comes with you. I never knew until we got married how true this was. I had no idea the choices (both good and bad) that Sam and I made long before we ever knew we would one day be husband and wife could so dramatically effect the way we function as a married couple. It's fascinating, and terrifying at the same time. My husband agrees.

Sam thought for a minute longer and then he told me that he has learned this:
"I never knew until I married you that there were so many parts of myself that I couldn't see. I feel like I was not capable of seeing the best parts of myself or the worst parts of myself until there was someone else looking at them with me. Then I had no choice but to face them."

I smiled in the dark. I know him also.

I have found no thing more beautiful than the way being joined as husband and wife allows us to know each other, and the way that God allows us to love each other deeper with every detail we learn about ourselves and our spouse.

My husband and I agree and state it aloud often that marriage is hard. We also agree that it is the ultimate refining process and we know that God uses us and our own sin to make the other look more like Jesus every day. Every single day we learn grace better, and mercy better, and how to love better.

Like I said, I have found no thing more beautiful.



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