Some Hard Truths…

So broken and so humbled right now.  I’m seeing my deficiencies more clearly than ever before and honestly wondering how much more work its going to take before I can begin to look like someone worthy of bearing the name of Christ.  But I’m also finding that this ministry called marriage is challenging the very core of who I am.  I feel like despite my best efforts and all I’ve learned over the course of this relationship, we keep wrestling the same issues.  We have a great conversation and determine to do better and then fall right back into being divided and unsatisfied over some other issue.  I don’t want a band-aid…I want to wear a cast to reset our entire bone structure if that’s what it takes…but I do not want to keep getting emotionally clobbered just as I’m dusting myself off from the last crisis. 
Even though we seem to have a great marriage that’s built on all the right things, we keep hurting each other and running into these mind-numbing communication black holes.   We’re supposed to be better than this but, for some reason, we’re not.  I’m learning that love really isn’t always enough even though we have plenty of it…but greater than this is the purpose of God and the mandate that he has placed on our lives as a couple.  The instructions are simple, but they are painful to obey at times…to honor our vows to each other for life.  Feelings matter but they do not determine our direction or our decisions.  However, they can’t be buried or ignored in favor of keeping the peace either.  So here I am struggling to balance the need to have emotional integrity with the need to honor my spouse by submitting to him as my head. 
Your probably wondering what has me in such a light and whimsical mood (note the sarcasm here).  Believe it or not, its because God has begun to move in the life of my spouse like I’ve never seen before.  I’ve spent the last few years praying over Immanuel’s life…asking God to give him boldness and confidence in who he is…to lay out a clear path before him and open doors of opportunity for him to walk through.  I’ve pleaded with the Lord to send people into his life who can pour into him wisdom, counsel, and mentorship in every aspect and for him to have the courage to begin to operate within the full level of his potential.  What I forgot to do was consider the greatness of God…who rarely answers prayers just as they are prayed.  In my short-sightedness, I forgot to ask Him for the grace to adjust to all of these things as they begin to manifest in his life and effect our relationship.  I couldn’t foresee the possibility that any of this might make me uncomfortable or scared or desperate for the man I married.  So now I’m left feeling inadequate and unprepared for how quickly things are happening, made worse by the fact that I’m not physically living at home right now.  We’ve always had somewhat separately busy lives but now it feels more like a canyon than a small crack running through the center of it all.
I have always been perfectly aware that I married someone who is greater than I am in many respects and on the inside, I have always believed that once he realized this greatness and began to fully walk in it, that it would only serve to highlight my deficiencies.  I just thought that I had a longer window before this became a reality but God’s timing is perfect so this cannot be a mistake.   I also never truly expected him to assert it in a way that would make me feel unworthy of him (unintentionally, of course).  So now I’m presented with a choice:  retreat into his shadow  and become ‘a great man’s wife’ or become a great man’s wife who is also great in her own respect. 
Truth time?  I am happy for him but I know this is only the beginning of even more drastic changes in both of our lives and I’m not so excited anymore.  I don’t know how to be married to a TD Jakes or a Benny Hinn or even a Mark Zuckerberg but I have to be prepared for the possibility that he really could be operating on that level some day…and not when we’re 50 either.  I don’t want to be a First Lady or a Prophetess or a business woman…but is that what it will eventually take for us to be equally matched?  I don’t want to be viewed as some iconic spiritual leader with people looking to me for answers because of who I happen to be married to.  I am just a woman who loves God and tries her best to give back in the smallest of significant ways.  I want to leave a thumbprint not a chalk outline of my body if you know what I mean.  And I don’t want to lose who I am trying to squeeze into some expectation or ideal of who I need to be if it just doesn’t fit.  
There are things happening in my life right now that I don’t love but I’m calling on God to teach me how to.  If I’ve learned anything from all of my frustrations and failures lately, its that I’m not nearly as flexible and centered in God as I once was.  I need to get back to that place of unshakable trust and peace. 
Meanwhile, I’m exploring some of my darker thoughts because I have this unrelenting need to be real with myself.  But I like this about me.  I actually understand how you can be in love with someone and believe that you know them better than anyone else one moment and then feel like they are a stranger you have to get to know all over again in the next.  I understand why people who aren’t christians and christians who aren’t strong in the Lord and even christians who are, can decide to end their marriage to the utter disbelief of everyone around them.  And finally, I can understand how emotions, legitimate and illegitimate can make a person want to give up on something great…especially when it begins to cost more and hurt more than what they bargained for.  But, I also remember what it was like going through life alone without a partner and the tears I cried for the husband I feared would never come.  This marriage is hard, cyclical, and volatile but its worth having and I would never willingly part with it.
So thank you Lord, for the spouse you sent me to try my soul and test my faithfulness.  We are a team but sometimes we forget that we are on the same one.  Teach us to perfect unity and oneness in every area of our marriage.  Help us to master the elusiveness of effective communication.  We will not give up on each other but we cannot hope to succeed without you.  Amen.

                                                                                                                JP

A Word or Two About Love…

I’ve been on this relationship vibe lately.  I keep analyzing mine and comparing it with other relationships good and bad in an effort to make sense of it all.  The latest subject of my analysis is a recent conversation with a good friend who just got involved in an apparently serious relationship.  This chick is excited.  More excited about it than anything else that is going on in her life right now.  I mean, it trumps the new dream job, the new place, and the recent trip to Paris.  So after listening intently (although more or less transfixed by my own disbelief) to her seemingly endless exaltations of this guy’s many merits, I managed to get a word in edgewise.  More or less I said something to the effect of, “you won’t always feel this way but if it’s really love then you two will make it.”  Her response was something along the lines of, “Oh Stacy, you know Immanuel is a wonderful man and you couldn’t be happy married to anyone else.”  I agree, but her comment felt kind of like a patient but firm brush-off.  I was simply making the point that I do not feel the way about my husband that I did when we first started dating.  In fact, my feelings (and I daresay his as well) have undergone many changes over the course of our 4 yr history.  I probably wouldn’t have wanted to hear anything quite so sobering when I was floating on my lovely cloud of magical-Immanuelness but I’d like to believe I was cautious about allowing myself to become that besotted. 

I felt like I  was playing the markedly less attractive, sarcastic side-kick in a romantic comedy…you know, the one where the beautiful leading lady can’t seem to find the right man and then ‘bam!’ he shows up right when she decides to stop looking and then everything about him just seems perfect.  So then she calls up her sensible yet cynical married girlfriend who warns her to ‘proceed with caution lest you fall into my pit of despair.’  Not my vibe at all.  I’m actually happy for her.  I’ve just never been one to fully run away with my feelings and I’m not about to do that to a good friend either.

 So after this rather surreal conversation, peppered with phrases like “I love my man!” and “He’s just so perfect for me!” I hung up the phone wanting to feel happier than I felt.  It’s kind of that uneasy feeling you get when you’re all psyched up for something to be a struggle but it turns out to be easy, something inside of you still needs to be careful, skeptical, ready for things to go south at any time.  The fact of the matter is, I don’t know this guy and I’m wondering what is so ‘special’ about him that can transform my friend so drastically in such a short amount of time.  How much of it is real and how much of it is emotional fog?

I am no stranger to emotional fog myself.  I have been guilty of it in many of my relationships, including my marriage.  It’s a wonder drug, really.  Like a powerful anxiolytic that bakes your brain into this sappy, dreamy, love-struck sponge cake unable to accurately perceive reality.  I know a certain amount of this is necessary just to get things started.  Most of us would just stay single forever if we could immediately detect all the flaws in a potential mate.  In fact, I know people like this and they are pitiful…convinced, but pitiful.  But I think it becomes dangerous if somewhere in the back of your mind you aren’t aware that the fog will eventually wear off…or at least prepare for the possibility that it will.  The fog can only hover for as long as the newness lasts…while everything is about putting your best qualities on display and graduating to new levels of intimacy step by step.  Then comes the gradual, imperceptible lifting of the fog that slowly unveils features, characteristics, and idiosyncrasies that you swear weren’t there before or that you once found so attractive but now drives you nuts.

I guess my real question is, can you really be in love with someone after knowing them for only one month?  After all, my husband said those words unexpectedly to me as we ended our first date, and I have no doubt he was sincere.  I could try to highlight differences in my relationship that justify such a bold early step, but I know that plenty of people would have cautioned me on this.  That’s probably why I kept it to myself for months before sharing it with anyone.  But I think that despite how certain Immanuel and I felt about our relationship from the very beginning, we knew we had to give it time to mature into what we believed it could be.  My stab at an answer is this…I think you can…or at least begin to construct the earliest remnants of love very early in a relationship, especially if you’re someone who knows what you want.  But I think it’s doomed to failure if you never move beyond the butterflies and fireworks.  If you never move to having disagreements and seeing each other tore up in the morning and working each other’s nerves how can you really get to know the core of this other person who you say you love?  If you don’t take the time to understand what makes them tick, what drives their passions, what quenches their soul…how can you really love that person?  If you never face a problem that can and should separate you but make the conscious decision to stay together, then how can you say ‘til death do us part’?  (Unless you’re planning to die real soon, then that’s a different story.)  Love is only partly driven by feelings; the rest is a series of lifelong decisions to keep loving that person.  That is what Steve Carrell meant in the movie Dan in Real Life when he said that love is an ability.  Falling in love is easy, but it takes tremendous skill to stay in love.

 I don’t pretend that Man and I are the perfect couple, although we get plenty of admiration.  If we look happy, it’s because we are and not because we are trying to.  Likewise, if we look unhappy, then…you know, we’re not…at least not at that particular moment.  Relationships are too challenging without the additional challenge of trying to fool everyone else into thinking that you don’t have problems.  And even the most best and saved of couples are breaking up these days so it’s clearly not about what looks good on paper.  Our marriage is hard.  He has a computer science degree that’s like a whole other language to me and I am 8 months shy of a medicine degree which is Greek to him as well.  I’m in the military and this alone has and will continue to turn our lives upside down for the next 8 years.  We spent the majority of our courtship and the first 7 months of our marriage living 7 hrs apart and since then I’ve been required to travel away from him multiple times for considerable lengths of time.  He wears several different hats as a leader in our church which is pastored by his parents, balancing commitments to many different people and ministries other than me. (Do I even need to allude to the host of potential issues for conflict there?)  And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.  We don’t even have a mortgage and kids yet.

I guess I just wish the notion of happily ever after would get flushed down the golden toilet for good after every female turns 10 years old because it’s not accurate or even possible in marriage.  It’s one thing to desire love and happiness in life, but it’s another to be completely deluded.  This belief creates false expectations and the illusion that if one doesn’t ‘feel happy’ anymore they should just call it quits and pursue their happily ever after someplace else.  I think it should be changed to ‘devoted ever after.’  If that’s too corny then create your own precisely worded yet palatable cliché.  I was just throwing something out there for you to chew on.

Someone once told me that God created marriage more to make you holy than to make you happy and that happiness is merely a natural byproduct of a healthy marriage.  My immediate reaction when I first heard this was staunch disagreement.  I mean, God made Eve because Adam was lonely and he needed her to make him happy, right?  But is that really what God meant by ‘it is not good for man to be alone’?  If you look at what really happened, she did something that challenged his role as spiritual leader in their marriage and further tested his personal knowledge of God’s instructions.  She exposed a weakness in his heart towards God as well as his lack of authority in their marriage. They both failed, and Adam even blamed her when God confronted him for answers.  This does not strike me as happily ever after.  Neither does getting cast out of a beautiful garden to fend for myself, having to sweat all day just to get a decent meal and having excruciating pain just to bring new life into this world.  Was this God’s original plan for mankind?  No…but he foresaw it.  And I think he knew that they needed each other to survive…to bring out the best and worst in each other so that He could strengthen them through their commitment to one another.  I think it’s a brilliant construct designed to push us, mold us, challenge us, and reveal our deepest of errors through the eyes of the one who loves you.  It’s a wonderful thought that perhaps God has chosen marriage as the ultimate training ground, working through our spouses as the single greatest means of influencing our character and decisions. If that isn’t worth having, then I don’t know what is.

                                                                                                                   JP

Birthday Blues

So, tomorrow is my hubby’s birthday and I will not be taking the 2.5hr drive back to NJ this weekend to celebrate with him.  Just to add some perspective here, let me explain that since our dating days, I have revered his birthday as I did Christmas when I was a child.  I normally spend months anticipating it and planning something fun or a great gift that I know he will love. Then I get to watch him enjoy his gift in that genuine and uniquely appreciative way he has about him.  Last year it was a surprise party at our apartment that I managed to plan secretly.  He still talks about how much he loved that party.  But on the day he turns 29, there will be nothing…at least from me.

Why this extreme departure from the norm?  Well, it all started with me planning this surprise trip to DC with our close friends.   He unknowingly made other plans for that weekend without discussing it with me and, in fact, had no celebratory plans in mind at all.  So I got furious and called everything off and refused to do anything for him at all.  Real mature, right? 

I can’t seem to let this thing go no matter how much I want to.  I forgive him but I kind of resent him at the same time.  It appalls me that someone can think so little of their own birthday and furthermore, deny their spouse the opportunity to dote on them.  Yes, I know that he is a product of his upbringing and is only mimicking what has been consistently demonstrated to him year after year.  I also know that he is not intentionally trying to make me crazy, but why oh why must I spell this out for him every year?  If I am perfectly honest, I will say that I have harbored this hope in the far corners of my heart these past 4 yrs, that he would somehow grow to appreciate my birthday as much as I appreciate his.  Every woman wants their man to make them feel special on their special day.  But year after year it feels like he just gives up before he even starts and then gives me something only because he doesn’t want to disappoint me.  I just don’t want to do this little dance anymore.  It’s the whole, “I want you to want” argument and it never ends well for the wounded party. 

Back to the b-day boycott.  At first it was about punishing him (which, of course always backfires resulting in him being completely un-phased and me being utterly frustrated).  But in the last week or so, I’ve decided that it’s about desensitizing my apparently unwarranted over-exuberance when it comes to the birthdays of those I love and (more importantly) allowing my husband to celebrate in the way that makes him the most happy (even if that excludes my presence).  I am being unselfish by appearing outwardly selfish.  Go figure. 

So here I am alone in Silver Spring, Maryland…frustrated, hurt, and wondering why he is the way he is but loving him anyway.  Of course, if you know me at all, you know that the birthday thing is just a manifestation of a much deeper issue.  There comes a time in every marriage where your fundamental personality differences become more glaringly obvious than when u were blinded by the haze of dating, engagement, and the early blissful months of being newlyweds.  These differences can be refreshing, inspiring, even liberating from your own way of thinking but after sometime, it can begin to drive you up the wall.

Take my husband for example.  He is essentially, a self-reformed introvert.  After spending his childhood and adolescence deathly silent and withdrawn, he has purposed to come out of his shell during the course of his young adulthood.  He is compassionate, giving, even-tempered, rational, gregarious, and people-pleasing.  He is an idealist, whose opinions and judgments are so pure that they border on self-righteous at times.  For him, finding the good in all people is an absolute must and doing for others is infinitely more important than doing for himself.  So a day that should be devoted to celebrating his existence really is just another day to him and is best spent doing what he loves most.

I am on the other end of the spectrum.  I am a reformed extrovert.  I used to be the quintessential attention-seeking hussy who needed constant validation from other people.  Graduating from college and then giving my life back to Christ really toned my personality down.  Now, I warm up to people slowly and am apt to spend much more time observing and listening than talking in an unfamiliar situation and/or a group setting.  I relish my solitude.  Where my husband is revived by interaction with people, I find it emotionally draining.  In fact, nearly all of the things I love to do most require that I do them alone…reading, writing poems/stories, exercising.  I am introspective, emotionally volatile, and a total home-body.  My personal bubble is very small, so much so that Immanuel is probably the only person in the world I can stand to be around almost all the time.  My time is extremely valuable to me and I am very particular about how and with whom I spend it.

As you can imagine, the source of many of our arguments is my perception that he often places the needs of others ahead of his family and his perception that I ‘don’t like people’ but will have to learn how to better share him.  “I love spending time with you with other people,” he says.  And I get it, I really do.  He considers his church to be his family.  But my family is my family.  He wants to bond with other couples and reach out to children and teens and fellowship with distant acquaintances.  All of that is nice, but to me it’s exhausting and time consuming.  I’m not interested in befriending everyone we know.  I don’t have enough emotional arsenal to sustain that many meaningful relationships.  I am perfectly happy with having most people in my life as acquaintances.  I am all about nourishing the important relationships we already have and leaving room to gradually incorporate (or even out-corporate) people into/out of our circle of trust.  In fact, I am even ok with not liking people and with people not liking me.  That’s perfectly healthy as far as I’m concerned. 

What I am not ok with is the possibility of my husband not accepting me and somehow hoping that this part of myself that I am content with will change.  And so, when he tells me that I am becoming his ‘lady’ (which he means as a huge compliment in recognition of my continued growth in character) I actually feel like he’s being condescending without meaning to be.  It’s almost like being told that who I am right now is not good enough but will be someday.    

Don’t get me wrong, I am gladly perfecting many aspects of my character, like patience, self-control, and kindness but I don’t believe that this will change the foundation of who I am.  I am an introvert by choice and it suits me…not a social recluse, not painfully shy, not cold and unapproachable.  When people describe me as reserved, cautious, unassuming, “quiet at first but a great person once you get to know her…” that makes me smile because it’s how I want to be thought of…a person worth getting to know.  And it’s those that take the time to get to know me, or at least allow me to take my time getting to know them who will become the closest to me.

In fact, in many ways, I don’t even fit the classic picture of an introvert.  I love entertaining in our home and have taken tentative strides towards befriending people who have shown, at best, lukewarm interest in pursuing a friendship with me.  I attend church events and other events for my husband’s more distant friends where, on many occasions, I know no one but my husband.  I am on friendly speaking terms with anyone who attends our small church with any regularity and have no issue with him spending time on his own with his friends or to go play music or to mentor someone, etc, etc, etc.  So I keep asking myself, what is it that really needs to change?  I’m not saying that I am the perfect wife, but I believe that I have adapted to his way of life as best as I can considering how vastly it differs from mine.  And I still believe that I need to be the one who says “no” and prioritizes family first just as much as he needs to be the one who says “yes” and puts others first.  This is not an easy dynamic but one that I believe we will be continuously perfecting for the duration of our marriage.  But the goal needs to be to understand each other’s essential personality differences and find ways to meet in the middle so that neither of us feels as if the other’s emotional integrity is being disregarded. 

So, I guess my gift this year is allowing my husband to be who he is and accepting that no matter how much he may puzzle me, I chose him for a reason.  And for all of this, I don’t really want him to change that much at all; just perfect what he already has to work with.  There is a time to concede and a time to stand firm in who you are as an individual.  The lesson I am still trying to learn is when to do what and why.  I suspect Romans 14 is a step in the right direction:

      ¹⁹So let us then definitely aim for and eagerly pursue what makes for harmony and for mutual upbuilding (edification and development) of one another (AMP)

 ²²Your personal convictions [on such matters]–exercise [them] as in God’s presence, keeping them to yourself [striving only to know the truth and obey His will]. Blessed (happy, ^[a]to be envied) is he who has no reason to judge himself for what he approves [who does not convict himself by what he chooses to do] (AMP)

                                                                                                                              JP