P and I were catching up with sweet friends this weekend over dinner (and snuggling their new baby), and we were asked the question, "what's been the most surprising thing about marriage so far?"
The question through me for a loop. I was prepared for lots of the usual questions, how's married life going, what's been hard, when are you having kids, how are the in laws, etc. But this one was completely new. I looked to P and he looked just as puzzled as I was. Thinking quickly and on my feet is not one of my strong suits, unless I'm talking to someone under the age of 4 and the answer, "because that's the way God made it," suffices. So I paused and pondered.
What came out was pretty raw and not anything I had thought on before. "I think I am most surprised at how hard of a time I have had adjusting to my reality being much different than my expectations of marriage and being a wife." It was honest but loaded and I couldn't have been more thankful to be in the safe company of friends that deeply cared for us and were not going to shy away from letting this conversation continue.
When P and I were engaged, I never had this fantasy that the moment we said I do, all our fighting, issues, frustrations, and conflicts would disappear. I didn't have a magical, mystical dream under any sense that the work to have grace and patience that I was giving during our engagement season was going to end and it would be butterflies and rainbows and unicorns from the honeymoon till the retirement home. But I did have expectations, some very high expectations, most specifically of myself going into marriage that I have found to just not be able to meet. And adjusting to the fact that this is a reality of not being able to meet these expectations, not just a temporary set of circumstances, has been the worst part.
I'm a notorious organizer and I love to cook for others. When we registered for wedding gifts, most of my favorites came from a desire to have an organized home or a home with a well fed husband. I had these expectations that our home would be clean, it would be exceedingly organized, and I would have home cooked meals made every night. Boy was I wrong. Though our laundry hamper may pre-sort our laundry into four colored loads, it doesn't mean they actually get done. All the Dutch ovens and cookbooks and recipe holders and our perfectly organized pantry(complete with printed labels from my label maker) doesn't mean I actually get meals cooked every night. Add a house mess in with some shortcomings on grace for my husband and I often feel like I'm failing as a wife. And the realization of my failures as a wife put me to the point of tears easily during the past three months.
I'm not cut out to do this wife-thing, I'm terrible at this, never have I been so inadequate at something in my whole life. What the heck did I do getting married and why didn't anyone point out that I was going to suck at it? It's not like I had three kids running around to blame on a messy house or a job that kept me working late to blame on the lack of dinners some nights. Why didn't I have it all together? Why wasn't I perfect?
Ahh. There it was. I was expecting myself to be this perfect newlywed wife and that's just not realistic. I'm not built for perfection. I had to get the demand for perfection out of my head and start learning to be okay with good, not perfect. Our house is relatively clean and we clean before guests come over (we took care of our cockroach infestation!), I make at least one home cooked meal a week but usually two, and a sink full of dirty dishes left overnight never killed anyone that I've heard of. But it's not been an easy adjustment, and learning this new reality and it's stark contrast with my original expectations on marriage have been certainly the most difficult adjustment of marriage so far. And some days I still find myself reassuring myself that this reality is okay. I may always have to do that, especially one day God-willing when we add some little rugrats to the household.
My sweet friend and her husbanband agreed with what I was sharing, having encountered the same experience of adjusting expectations in their marriage. Why no one tells you this before you get married, I'm not sure. It was never in any of our premarital counseling or the Bible studies we read, but maybe it was just one of those lessons you have to feel to learn.
"But He said to me 'My grace grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses so that Christ's power may rest on me" (Corinthians 12:9)
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