Today I wrote a big thing on our monthly calendar.
It’s interesting, you walk down the aisle and start your life with a person. You become one. You have the option to change your last name, your bank account, your address, your furniture. We did all of those things.
We both changed our earthly identities to now permanently include one another. We made promises that are huge. They don’t really feel huge when you’re standing there...young, healthy and well-rested. But then, those three things don’t last forever for any of us and life can take turns you never expected.
My brain works in a way that I need to sit, reflect and shuffle through my thoughts and reflections in order for them to make sense. It’s like a big stack of papers that needs to be sorted through and then placed into alphabetically organized files. If the papers never make it into the files, they don’t set in and they end up getting misplaced or lost forever. So I’m filing through some things and writing out ten things I’ve learned in ten years of marriage. To be honest, the list came together really quickly.
I’ve learned way more than ten things but looking back, it was easy to see themes that weaved in and out of our marriage.
So here we go...I’m breaking up the ten things into two separate posts because apparently I’m long-winded. So below are the five things I learned in the first five years of our marriage. Stay tuned for Post 2.
Year One
Leave your individualism at the door. Has American culture taught you that you need to be independent and self-sufficient? Have you believed that you must, at all cost, take care of yourself first? This mindset will no doubt, hinder the intimacy within your marriage. You are no longer the single person who comes and goes as they please. You are not the only one eating the meal. You are no longer the only one spending the money.
If we truly believe that “what God has joined together, let no man separate”, then leave your claims of independence at the marriage alter. Lay them down.
Becoming one is about laying yourself down. I struggled hard with this. I wanted to keep my bank accounts. I wanted him to come to me. I wanted to sacrifice nothing while demanding him to conform 100%. That’s not biblical. It’s not even fair from a secular standpoint. Be all in. Let go of who you were before.
Year Two
This was the year that we were taught, no, forced, to cut the cord from our families of origin. We moved across the country where we were on our own, together. When we lived near family, we didn’t do this well. We fell back into old patterns. We didn’t cling to one another. And then...we moved. We didn’t have the option to gain strength or respite or whatever from our old families. We were forced to depend on one another in a new and deeper way.
This was the year that my husband became my family. Even though our wedding ceremony had declared this truth two years earlier, this was when it became a reality in my heart and going forward. This was the year of leaving and cleaving.
Year Three
In year three of our marriage, a lie that I’d believed my whole life came crashing down, that the people closest to me were against me. I’d historically lived my life with an unintentional assumption that people around me were out to get me. I’d assume the worst. This applied to everyone...my family, my friends, strangers driving next to me, and now my husband. And he called it out in me. He began speaking the truth in my life that this was a destructive tendency. He showed me ways that I was assuming the worst about him and others. Upon the revelation, I was able to regulate these thoughts and take them captive, speaking truth over the lie. And my habits changed. I began speaking well of him. I began looking for the good and I began assuming the best.
Year Four
For us, year four was full of excitement, new beginnings and anticipations. We'd just welcomed our first child, moved back to our home state and bought our first home in this pivotal year in our lives. But it was also the year that I learned to depend on another person more fully than ever before. For the first time, I saw just how weak I was. I’d worked night shifts before, but never had I experienced the breaking points that come in managing life with a newborn. The lack of sleep, the laying down my career, the powerlessness to control, it all led me to my knees and to a new level of humility to depend on my husband deeply. Of course, this model of dependence and humility can only point us to the way we should humbly and desperately run to our Heavenly Father, who loves us, who knows we are overwhelmed, and who already knows we can’t make it without him and who is sufficient to love us perfectly.
Year Five
The lesson from this year could be a blog on it’s own. It was a year defined by a new and unexpected struggle for me. A struggle that involved my identity. My place in this world.
We’d decided that I would stay home with our son instead of looking for a new job in our new city. I wasn’t prepared at all for how that would cause me to question my value as a contributor to our marriage, our family and our society as a whole. I realized I’d unknowingly been placing a value on myself that was directly related to my monetary income. I was completely unaware of it until that value was suddenly zero. I spent the year struggling to see the importance of my role at home with my child, resenting the decision we’d made and striving to justify my value in my own eyes, as well as everyone elses. All the while, having a husband telling me of my immense value.
Then one morning at a MOPS meeting, an older, wiser woman reminded me that I was in a season. And that a new season would come. And another. And another. And soon I would be in her shoes.
And for some reason, that message clicked with me that morning. And I stopped trying to change the season I was in.
I started seeing the beauty of my season and believing the actual truth about my value, a child of the Living God. This truth translated into my marriage in an incredibly powerful way. I was finally free to serve my husband and child with joy, instead of needing reassurance and appreciation for my efforts. I was free to spend my day cleaning, cooking, playing with toys, running our home and doing all the other things stay-at-home-parents do without feeling like I was wasting away. I finally understood the value of the “audience of One”.
As I'm looking back over these five lessons in our first five years of marriage, I'm struck by the fact that these lessons were all dealing with issues, heartaches, misconceptions and lies I'd believed and brought into our marriage. The next five that are coming, they're mostly new things. Things that came up after we joined our lives together. And that's not something I intended, and it's definitely not something I noticed in real time. But I think it's relevant to how we face our challenges. As we begin to dig into the hurts and hangups of our pasts, new hurts will arise. But we cling to our covenant. The promise we made to one another. All those years ago.