Imperfect is the New Perfect: what marriage has taught me about hanging out with your bestie for a really long and epic slumber party!

When considering the concept of transparency it is hard to overlook my relationships, especially my relationship with my hottie hubs. I consider it crucial to not only be authentic in the relationships I cultivate, but also remaining accountable to others about those relationships.

Our culture is so hyper-focused on weddings, over-the-top-lip-dub proposals, couples, engagement shoots, sparkly rings and marriage. Simultaneously, our culture (especially the culture of the church) tells us there is something wrong with being single. You are flawed if there isn’t a ring on your finger. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I am a big fan of using social media to make it look like Joe and I have it all together (and we just love some selfies). Flash to reality: we are sitting on our Big Lots couch in sweats watching a whole lot more Netflix than is socially acceptable. I rarely am wearing makeup and last week, I actually witness the sweet boy grab a dirty (dirty dirt, y’all) spoon from the kitchen sink and use it to cut a slice of pizza. In what world do men gather such logic? Basically, getting to play roomie with your best friend for eternity is pretty legit, but even more often Joe and I fight over pity things (see above: spoon incident) or I am crying in the bathroom because everything I try on makes me “feel” like a heifer and we are late for whatever event we were attempting to attend. When I think of how I present our relationship I want to be honest and real about life getting real ,because to me that is what makes it so imperfectly perfect. I have even received comments or text messages to the extent of “AH. Y’ALL ARE PERFECT.” That’s when I just have to say…shut the front door. We aren’t perfect, not even a bit. In fact, it is incredibly hard for me to describe our relationship without the Gospel. We are simply two sinful people that have failed one another repeatedly in the past and will continue to fail each other in the future. We have been together for a long time and during that time we have gained invaluable knowledge about forgiveness and grace. There are times when I know people have questioned our motives or logic, etc. but ultimately, we have rested in a supernatural peace from Christ that points us to the cross. I want to share some of the things we learned during pre-martial counseling and in our very few months of marriage so far.

1.   “We are family. Get up errbody and sing” –Sister Sledge

            I used to think that when I got married I would get a new last name and a new family—score! My family would gain a son and la la la, “I got all my sisters with me”. In reality though, Joe and I are now a family; our own little family, just chilling in Durham. We still have families and we obviously still love them, but instead of gaining new family members we additionally, have created a new family. I think before I only considered that we would “start” a family once we had wittle bebes, but we now are seeking new family traditions at holidays, new dinner ideas, new schedules, and new grocery lists. We treaded some rocky water in the first month in the comparison game… "Well, my family does this…” "My family always used this…” Guess what? It does not matter. Our family is still in the establishment stage and we are still stumbling through it, because our families have had a lot longer to get their acts together and my mom’s laundry just smells better and her food just taste better. We are so thankful to have such incredible families to structure our family after (Caveat: I still call my mom much more than the average gal. Sorry, she's my bestie.). You are called to leave your mother and father, cleaving to your spouse. Our family now represents a sacredness that our families respect and value. We are now one flesh—say WHAAA.

2.The world’s concept of marriage looks a lot different than God’s intent for marriage:

The world tells us that marriage is going to fix us. You will truly be happy once you are married, but if you aren’t before I doubt the new stressors of marriage will make you much happier. Our spouse is not some incredible healer. When I hurt really, really badly Joe brings me comfort but only God can heal those pains. How does our perception of marriage change when we consider its purpose is to make us more holy? Marriage is the most tangible glimpse we get on earth of what Christ’s love for us looks like. The bible uses the metaphor of bride and bridegroom to describe His love for us. Y’all, this is just beautiful to me. Rather than making us wait till Heaven to experience something this close to His love He gives us marriage. The world considers marriage a contract. We are bound to marriage, like prison or a business deal and once we don’t enjoy it anymore we must break our contract. Contracts tell us that marriage is a 50-50 deal, but really at no point has our marriage been 50-50 so far; instead, Joe has owned a lot of responsibility as I have struggled with grieving and sickness. I have been responsible for encouraging him as he seeks new job opportunities. We have to give way more than 50 percent without feeling used or entitlement. However, the Bible tells us marriage is rather a covenant between two people, modeled after Christ’s covenant in the New Testament. It is completely unconditional. When things get tricky or even unbearable we can depend on the unconditional love of our spouse as something that can’t be broken or taken off the table. A covenant is all the good parts of a contract yet, better and without legalities. I don’t have to be concerned if I am violating some code or if my actions will be used against me later.

3.Protecting your marriage through meaningful boundaries:

Communication is just not my thing, not my cup tea, not my scone. I am actually an expert at low blows and saying truly hurtful things during arguments. I come from a culture that openly picks out the flaws of men and one thing I realized I would need to commit myself to was protecting Joe’s integrity in that atmosphere. Rather than calling five girlfriends on speed dial every time I get my feelings hurt, it is much more useful to effectively communicate within our marriage, instead of finding refuge in resources outside of our marriage. Another thing, I found revolutionary was score keeping is completely useless. Y’all, I love hard but I have a memory like no other when it comes to hurt feelings. Only in the last two years of our relationship did I stop this with Joe. During a huge fight, I started to bring up the time he called me stupid in 2008 at 5:14 in the evening and realized wow, this is not that productive. Communication is a tricky business and everyone comes into fights, discussions, arguments (all code words for “ish getting real”) from different angles. Employing a language of repentance is much more productive. Apologizing for being selfish, instead of “I’m sorry I recognized how absolutely ridiculous you were being” or instead of slamming the door so hard your dog confused it for a minor earthquake, is a terrifying, vulnerable, and rewarding language to speak. Let us all write this on our hearts and foreheads, “But let everyone be quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger” (James 1:19). Another thing that was so helpful for us, was physically writing down a list of boundaries we would abide by: never bringing up divorce or leaving the house when fighting, going to bed at the same time, etc. Writing these down and thinking through ways to protect your marriage in a world that is against marriage was so important to us. Also, serving one another in our marriage has brought us such great joy—waking up to a packed lunch when you were dead tired the night before is love.

I was petrified by marriage when we began talking about it as a reality because I heard of such horror stories from newlyweds about those first few months, years of marriage. I am confident we will see much more rocky road ahead and rejoice much louder in the future, but today I am happy right where I am.