Newlywed bliss never reached the Garland family. Our first year was difficult (and miserable) at times.
We were overcoming all the challenges of everyday life, like learning to tolerate each other’s weird habits like leaving toothpaste uncapped and refusing to use thick bed comforters.
But I also suffered from undiagnosed obsessive-compulsive disorder (which spikes during major life changes, such as marriage). Meanwhile, my husband has decided to quit his well-paying job to go back to school full-time and pursue a new career. (At the time, I was working at a nonprofit and making zilch.) Additionally, we experienced the death of a beloved relative.
Needless to say, stress factors abounded. My husband and I were exhausted mentally, emotionally, spiritually, financially, and even physically.
Since we were living in a new town without a church home or community, it was all too easy to take all of our frustrations, anxieties, and anger out on each other. The truth is, I was the main culprit, overwhelmed by the untold emotional pain and pressure of having to work two more part-time jobs to continue paying the mortgage while my husband went back to school.
this is?
I share all this baggage, and I distinctly remember thinking, “Is this all there is to marriage?” I remember wondering why I was so ridiculously excited and desperate to get married when it would only add to the stress. It was another relationship that required responsibility and sacrifice. Today brought back some happy moments and memories, but I quickly realized that finding Mr. Right was not the goal.
Society may want women to believe that finding their soulmate will complete them and give them a sense of worth and confidence they never had before. But that’s just a well-crafted lie driven by emotion.
We buy into the market’s idea that imperfect humans with selfish bodies would perfectly model the fantastical modern versions of knights and aristocrats we read about and see in works of fiction. Lies lurk everywhere in the books and movies created by writers to paint a picture that is nowhere to be found in reality.
That’s why lies sell. This is a fun escape game with a lot of “promises” to offer, so we bought the storyline as a plausible end goal. So when the joke was on us, when we took the bait and realized we were setting ourselves up for disappointment because the script wasn’t built on the perfect protagonist, resentment builds up within us. Cynicism takes hold.
You and I both know it never ends well.
Wait, there’s more
It is the Savior’s strong, good, sustaining hand, rather than a romantic partner, that gives us fulfillment not only in this life but in eternity. He is the only source of information. There is no substitute for the peace, purpose, and perfection found in Christ Jesus.
This can be hard to hear when you’re feeling hopelessly alone as a single person, or when you’re trying to find some joy back in your marriage, but if there’s one thing my husband and I have learned through the years of ups and downs we’ve experienced, it’s that he and I can’t “fix” each other.
We can uplift each other, encourage each other, challenge each other, and all of that is good. But the deep, personal work to make me a better partner is only found when I stop blaming, reveal my heart, and ask God to cleanse me of the shortcomings I habitually bring to the relationship.
I find Christ in this humble work. And the more I understand who Christ is and His plan for my life, the more fulfilled I feel. The more fulfilled I am, the better wife I can be.
But what does it actually look like to find and maintain this sense of fulfillment, especially during seasons when marriage can feel boring and unstable?
1. Understand your partner’s humanity
One of the main reasons our newlywed fights got even worse was because my overactive, serotonin-unbalanced brain wanted all fights to be resolved the moment they happened. I wanted everything resolved quickly so he and I could move on. But when the argument started right before bed, it wasn’t the best time to let out all your emotions and start a long lecture.
By 10pm my husband is checked out. He is not in a strong enough position cognitively to host a healthy conversation to flesh out the deep wounds between the couple. So dealing with emotionally intense disagreements required him to not only recognize but truly understand that his body needed plenty of rest. I had to learn to pause discussions and reevaluate the next morning when he had more head space.
Too often, we force a fulfilling marriage into an impossible box where both parties are perfect. Therefore, we must respect the humanity of our spouse and become disappointed and impatient if we do not demand from him unlimited mental, emotional, physical, and even spiritual capacity to meet all our needs (and desires).
When you understand that your partner is an ordinary human being with limited resources, just like me, you, and everyone else on earth, you can give them grace and space. The more you accept their humanity, the more you realize that they fight battles just like you and need the same grace and patience you ask of them.
2. Pursue Christ together
For the first five or six years of our marriage, my husband and I grew spiritually separately. It was private and personal for both of us. But after giving birth to our first son and realizing the new challenges that parenting brings, we naturally (or rather supernaturally) gravitated toward being more open about our faith with each other.
Our chats in the car turned into some of our deepest questions about the nature of God, how to properly discipline our children, and how we can better honor the call to love, support, and sacrifice for one another.
In fact, just over a year ago, my husband and I became small group leaders in our church’s young families group. We knew there was a spiritual need for community among families with newborns, infants, and young children, but there was no one else available to lead, so my husband stepped forward. Now, each week our home is filled with young parents, crying babies, wild toddlers, delicious food, laughter, and the Word of God.
Pursuing Christ with my husband, through intense and intimate conversations in the car and through outward service of loving others and serving our local church, has fundamentally changed our marriage.
We no longer seek each other to fulfill ourselves. We naturally find that sense of purpose in Jesus. And the more we pursue that purpose as a couple, the more our thought patterns will align and our frustrations won’t end in ugly arguments. Therefore, mutual respect and willingness to sacrifice for each other is a beautiful by-product.
Will we still argue and get irritated with each other? Come over after my husband “helps” with the laundry, or when I forget to take my OCD medication… We are not perfect as individuals or in our marriages. But there’s a new sense of long-term suffering that flows much more freely than when we first got married.
unity of christ
Christ is the Unifier, but only on the basis of truth. Unity without truth has no meaning. There’s no direction. And it certainly doesn’t bring fulfillment. So when we believe the lie that another human being will satisfy our soul and seek our fulfillment from our spouse, we are living under an unstable roof.
But by recognizing the humanity of our partners and pursuing Christ with them, we can find the value of our souls in the trustworthy God within. The joy of our hearts is rooted in a peace that endures through life’s ups and downs. That is what makes marriage not only beautiful but also valuable.
Photo credit: ©Thinkstock/jacoblund
Peyton Garland is a writer, editor, and mom of a boy who lives in the beautiful foothills of East Tennessee. For more encouragement, subscribe to her blog Uncured+OK.
