Two Important Things Learned From Marriage

A long, LONG time ago, my sister-in-law Kaile wrote a blog about 6 things she had learned in her first 6 months of marriage: http://aspects-of-me.blogspot.com/2014/02/6-things-learned-from-6-months-of.html  I enjoyed reading it and was inspired to write a similar blog reflecting on my 5 years of marriage and hoped to draw an equivalent 5 things out.

Well, I came up with two.  Very hard ones.  And had to stop there because it made me realize that there is a lot more hard learning that I still have to do.  I'm not saying that marriage is only hard lessons, but in marriage there is an awful lot of self-sacrifice, which for Christians is simultaneously the most difficult and most necessary lesson we will have to learn.

The tough lesson of self-sacrifice comes even more into play when two become three, and marriage becomes not just marriage but parenting--which is the milestone Steve and I will be hitting in the next 5-6 weeks when our little guy enters the world.

So I figured I better post what I've got before Baby Boy arrives and I have a whole new phase of self-sacrifice to learn and it's even harder to finish things I've started.  :)

So here are two of the most important lessons I've learned in my 5 years of marriage.

1. Communicate, even when it's hard.  This was a hard one for me to learn.  I grew up believing with all my heart that negative emotions should not be shared with others.  And that conflicts were best handled by not handling them at all.  To say that my husband did not grow up believing these things would be an understatement.  Our worst, longest, most brutal nights in our first years consisted of a horrible cycle: I got upset, I shut my mouth, Stephen tried to pry everything out of me, and the harder he pried, the deeper I dove into anger, pain, silence, and resentment at him for prying.

To this day, when through a conversation my deepest negative emotions are brought to the surface for all to see, I'm still reminded of The Chronicles of Narnia, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, when Aslan takes his claws to Eustace's scaly exterior and removes his layers upon layers of dragon skin.  It is an extremely painful experience for Eustace.  And so extremely necessary.

While it's hard to face my own ugliness, God has given Stephen an amazing capacity to forgive, fully and without any consequences.  That forgiveness, I have learned, is SO much healthier in a relationship than simple conflict avoidance.

2. The difference between heat and thorns.  This is one I first learned from a counselor (Steve Green from Impact Biblical Counseling), and marriage became my platform for putting it into practice.  It is tied to Jesus' teaching from Mark 7:20-23, where he says, "What comes out of a person is what defiles him. For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery,  coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”  To paraphrase Steve Green in his article "The Gospel Makes a Difference": You aren't angry at your spouse because they "made" you angry.  You are angry at them because deep down inside you have anger.  In metaphorical terms, your spouse's words or action are the heat that was applied to you--but the thorns that came to the surface in you were already there.  The heat just brought them out.  And the solution is to turn to the Cross in repentance for your thorns, and let Christ do His work to heal you from them.

This is not to say that your spouse has no thorns of his or her own.  For every fallen human being, thorns are a given!  But what we've learned is that it is not your job to make your spouse repent of his or her thorns.  That is the Holy Spirit's job.  Our job is to continually turn back to Christ to heal us from our own thorns, and to pray and trust the Holy Spirit to work on each other's thorns. 

Summer 2012

Our summer has been surprisingly eventful, particularly toward the end.  In July, we went on a vacation to the Washington coast with Stephen's parents and alllllll his siblings, including Mary and Tim and their two little ones, and also Cari's boyfriend, Eric.  We just spent a week at a resort town in the process of development, walking on the beach, hanging out and playing games at the house, swimming in the pool and relaxing in the hot tub.  We each took turns cooking dinner.  We had some very tasty steak-and-veggie kabobs by Cari and Eric, a yummy Mexican meal by Tim and Mary, and Stephen and I made spaghetti.  It was a very relaxing, laid-back vacation all together.


Shortly after the family vacation, Stephen shot his first paid wedding gig.  There is a lot invested in wedding days, so he was under a lot of stress leading up to the wedding day, and also some in the photo editing phase as well.  But he finished it, and the couple was very, very pleased with the photos, for which we are very thankful.


In August, one of my college friends got married, so I flew down to Idaho and stayed with my aunt, uncle, and cousin and attended Mindy's wedding, which was butterfly garden themed--very pretty!  They put a lot of humorous personal touches to their ceremony and the reception was one big, fun party, complete with a photo booth and props. :)  I got to catch up with some old friends and meet some new ones and had a really good weekend all together.  I am really glad I got to go.

My car's A/C stopped working sometime earlier this year, and we finally took it to get checked out in August, and found out we had to get a new part and the whole thing had to be reassembled.  God graciously provided the money for us, and we fixed it toward the end of August. In the same month, I had to get a new car key, because the buttons on my remote-entry car key didn't work anymore!  And today I got into a rear-end car accident (I was rear-ended by a car who was rear-ended by a car), but I'm not hurt at all and the damage to my car is very minimal.  The accident was not my fault at all, so insurance will be taking care of everything.

We've had an Indian summer this September, with temperatures in the high 80s and 90s.  I think the weather is trying to make up for the very cold and dark beginning of summer we had!  For now I am totally okay with sunshiny weather....I know those cold dark days are coming again!


Our church got a new music pastor, an answer to prayer after 3 years of searching for the right person.  Our church is now able to do so much more music-wise than we were before, because our temporary worship leader was doing so much other work in his position as Communications Director.  Now at our women's Bible study, Mark (the new worship pastor) comes and leads us in worship with a guitar, and we don't have to sing off a CD!  I am especially thankful for that.

Another answer to prayer is that Stephen got a nice raise this year, and we are so grateful for God's provision there!  Now it is actually a possibility for us to move into a bigger apartment, although we won't be taking advantage of that just yet.  For now it does ease up our budget some, and we'll hopefully be able to start putting more money toward debt repayment.

Overall, I think this year has been an incredible year of growth for us and our marriage.  I've grown in my faith in leaps and bounds, and as I've spiritually matured, I'm maturing in other ways.  Praise God for His faithfulness!  I sense good changes coming up for us.  I'm hoping to find my niche in the church we attend, although I'm not sure what that is yet.  And Stephen will be leading our regular small group Bible study again.  This year we will probably be going through 1 Corinthians to go along with our pastor's sermon series. You can pray for us through that.  We want to help our fellow brothers and sisters deepen their faith, as many of them are new Christians or just aren't sure how to grow deeper.  So you can be praying especially for Stephen as he bears the responsibility of teacher, and for me as I try to figure out where I fit into the mix.

Those are the biggest pieces of news.  Thank you for your prayers and your support!  You don't know how much it helps. :)

Lessons in Materialism

I've been receiving some difficult lessons in materialism lately. With the new root canal and crown going in, money is super tight--way more than it's ever been before. We are cooking a lot at home, and have really had to cut back on our spending. I definitely do not get to buy new clothes or make-up or other nice things, which has been a lot more difficult than I like to admit.

God's way of teaching me that everything I own is His, not mine, is to bring me to the point of fear where I start envisioning all our household belongings, one by one, being stripped from us, to pay off debts and bills. I've read about that happening in books and I've seen it in movies. It might be a tad bit dramatic for a middle-class American, but boy, is it an effective lesson! I always end up crying, but after I cry and grieve, I find I've let go of all those belongings and entrusted my life back to God. It's sure not easy, but it's needed to break the hold all those things have on me.

That's just for me personally. Right now Stephen and I together are having a lesson in trusting God to provide for our needs. Another root canal and crown may be coming up for me, and we do not have the funds for it. Last year we were fortunate enough to get a large tax refund, but this year, our tax refund was quite small and has already been spent. We've signed up for a line of health credit, which we sincerely hope we don't have to use. We will use it if God doesn't provide the funds in other ways, but we're waiting to see what He does.

One of Stephen's favorite Bible verses to quote in tough times like this is a verse in Proverbs: "The horses are ready for battle, but the victory is the Lord's." He interprets it to mean that we should prepare in wise ways for times of financial difficulty, but ultimately everything is up to God. It's a tough line to walk.

We find out whether the second tooth is going to be a root canal on April 14th, when I go in for my 1st crown. The dentist is going into it as if it is simply a re-filling, but if he gets in there and it turns out my tooth's root is exposed, it's another root canal for me. For now we play the waiting game. And pray and hope.

In one small side-note--I had a job interview on Saturday! My first one in a year! It was with UPS--I just responded to a Craigslist ad, and they were holding all interviews the next day. It's just part-time and minimum wage. I find out at the end of the week what they decide. (More waiting!) That's all the news... Thanks for your prayers. A blessed Easter to you all.

One of my friend's Facebook statuses:
"As long as the tomb is empty, it doesn't matter as much about the milk jug, or the bank account, or the gas tank."

Wow, to have that kind of perspective! :)