First, I decided to title the blog “Regarding Today” because of a conversation me and Trevor had this weekend about God only giving us enough grace for one day at a time. We realized the worry we felt over the following day was gone when that day actually came about. There was a sense of rest there that we weren’t expecting and couldn’t see from the previous days’ perspective. It helped relieve a lot of stress for me when I realized you know what, I’m responsible for my attitude today, that I’m walking in grace today. Tomorrow, there will be more, and there will be enough.
Speaking of, let it be known. To me, husband is the sun, the moon, and the stars. He ordered that waffle maker mentioned in my last post RIGHT AWAY. I didn’t even have to tell him to go read the post. Belgian waffles all day!
A note about this post: I’m writing from a place of just sharing thoughts, getting them onto a physical space. I’m not writing anything to inform people, and maybe no one will even read this! It’s just always interesting for me to hear people’s perspective on marriage and relationships and hear about their experiences, whether they’ve been together 2 years or 20. These are just some of my thoughts and discoveries thus far.
Our church hosted a marriage conference this past Saturday called Becoming One. Our core group decided in the beginning that this really was an investment that required our full focus and energy. I think we all felt a personal responsibility to help make this thing excellent because each of us have close friends or family who have gone through, or are going through incredibly difficult times in their marriages. We have seen young divorces and relationships destroyed. In the past year, it has been an alarming wake-up call to witness the damage so personally..to see that it truly can happen to anyone, and no one is an exception to the struggles of a marriage relationship. It hasn’t been uncommon to hear of couples who love God and are active in their church bring up divorce after a relatively short time together. After only being married a year, I can already see that it is in the subtle/small things that the true damage occurs. Sometimes, I can say something hurtful to Trevor without even thinking about it and take no care to heal the wound I inflicted, or try to understand how deep that wound went and implanted itself in his heart. I’ve noticed in our relationship how big of a role our personal past plays. Trevor has said relatively light things to me just playing around, and 5 seconds later I’m in tears. Why? It touched something in me that took me immediately back to when I was 5 years old. If Trevor had not had the discernment to see that I needed healing..that I needed the Holy Spirit to uproot some things that were clearly taking a toll, the intimacy between us would take a minor step toward deterioration. A small step, but then chances are something else would happen the next day, or the next. I’m convinced that this is how many young couples start to consider separation when they swore they never would. I know that for some, the culprit is something much more physical, much more outwardly obvious. Still, “Catch the foxes for us, the little foxes that spoil the vineyards, for our vineyards are in blossom. (Song of Solomon 2:15)” The foxes would eat the tiny buds on all of the plants before they had a chance to bloom. I know everyone’s situation is different, but in my experience, it is always the smallest of things that are the most destructive, that I know will destroy the gift of real intimacy and trust.
This is such a new journey, only one year under our belts so far! But one year is still a good amount of time that we have to either hurt or help heal each other. Hundreds of times in a day, in the seemingly smallest of ways, I can either let God use me in Trevor’s healing or defy God and deepen Trevor’s hurt. We each are in a constant state of healing and there will be wounds that need a healing touch until the day we die. There will always be those places…the healing process is endless on this side of heaven. If we don’t acknowledge we are hurting and we pretend that we don’t need healing, grace will never be experienced. I can’t receive grace from Trevor if I don’t first become vulnerable in my deepest hurt. There will be a wall in my heart, and I won’t be able to receive anything from him, and therefore from God, because only God can give Trevor the grace to pass onto me.
I’ve realized it’s easier to say “Nothing you can say can hurt me…you’re not affecting me. It’s just that you’re being ridiculous and you’re wrong and I’m just trying to get you to understand that” than to say “You hurt me. It hurts when you say ….. because …..” I’m basically saying, “I am vulnerable, I can be hurt, you have the power to hurt me, and you have.” This has not gotten any easier with time. It takes me humbling myself every time, which I don’t to be honest. I can probably only count on one hand the times I’ve actually done this. I can sit in my pride during a fight for a very long period of time and act like the queen of the universe. Trevor humbles himself first almost every single time.
I realize blaming genetics is taking out nearly all personal responsibility, and the only reason I bring this up is because of behaviors that become normal from a young age. My lineage is hot-blooded French/Cajun on both sides all the way down. What is conflict resolution? Can’t we just yell and cry and go eat something? It’s a rare form of passive aggression that involves lots of tones, underhanded remarks, sarcasm, crazy facial expressions, escalation/exasperation, and all the family members saying as many words as humanly possible in a loud voice for a long time all simultaneously…whoever’s the loudest wins everything. I’m not saying my family always dealt with these cards, but I’m not saying we never did. The only reason I think this is significant is because I discovered upon getting hitched that this was my default style of conflict “resolution” (for lack of a better word). Trevor has a hard time going 20 minutes in an argument. I’m still organizing my defense. My voice has only gone up one octave in that amount of time! God help me. I need help in this, and He really has been good to use Trevor to speak to my heart, quiet my fears, and tear down my defenses.
Soo yeah, all of that to say..we needed the marriage conference this weekend 🙂 Thank you to everyone who helped!
Regarding Today 