All The Stuff People Said That Turned Out To Be True

Lots of people have lots to say about marriage. By the time I got married at age 28, I think I’d heard just about everything good, bad, and ugly about matrimony. Now, six months into a marriage of my very own, I’m evaluating the truth of all of that advice, input, suggestion, warning, and counsel. Granted, I’m still a bit of a novice at the whole marriage thing, but so far, I think these are just a few of the things that have proven true…

Make sure you marry your best friend. On our honeymoon, Troy and I loved using the new terms “husband” and “wife” as much as possible. But we were surprised to find that it was just as glorious to say “you’re my best friend”. It’s still a little awe-inspiring to look across a room at him and think about how he’s my best friend in the whole world.

The couple that prays together, stays together. A little cliché, and perhaps 6 months isn’t quite enough time to prove that it really works. BUT, it’s striking how powerful it is to pray together. Sometimes it’s just a quick few sentences as he’s headed out the door for work, and other times it’s a lengthy conversation with God and each other. Either way, prayer communicates a “team” mentality better than anything else, and keeps our focus in the right place.

Time is your friend. Admittedly, I wasn’t the biggest fan of the 13 month engagement Troy and I had. I’d always pictured myself as the 4-month-engagement kind of gal. We had a tough go of it too…plenty of arguments and issues to get ironed out. But around month 12, miraculously, everything settled down. All the sudden we were communicating well, understanding each other more fully, and laughing together regularly. It felt like we’d made it through some sort of obstacle course. Everything we accomplished in those 13 months has sweetened our first 6 months of marriage. Although not perfect, it’s been easy and smooth – and WONDERFUL. I can honestly say, we owe the incredibleness of these first 6 months to the challenges we worked through in those 13 (when we still had the opportunity to go home to separate places at the end of the night and get some space from each other to process!).

Girl friends still matter. Yes, Troy is my best friend. Yes, I want to spend ALL of my time with him. Also true: my girl friends connect with, sharpen, and inspire parts of me that he doesn’t. Neither Troy nor I feel like that’s because he’s lacking in any way. In fact, he appreciates the time I spend with girls because it makes me a better woman and wife.

Good communication is KEY. If I had a nickel for every time I heard this… Turns out, it’s true! I always thought “How hard can communication be? You say what’s on your mind, you listen to what’s on theirs, and POOF, you’ve got communication.” But the truth is, you’re not just dealing with words, you’re dealing with 2 totally different languages of the heart that both happen to use English to express themselves. The hardest part, I think, is the listening. Not just hearing, but listening with the goal to understand.

When you marry a person, you marry their family too. Ok, perhaps this is a little bit overstated. It’s important to draw good boundaries and create your own new family unit. But, family is forever. And even if you don’t deal with each other’s family members every day, you definitely deal with each other’s family culture every day. Amazing how family culture impacts just about every single aspect of every single thing. In the last 6 months I’ve learned a lot about my own family, as well as his. I’m thankful for Troy’s family. Although they are certainly different than mine, they have GREAT core values, loyalty to each other, and they are all very close!

You fall more in love every day. Skeptical little Jen had a hard time believing this one. But I’ll gladly admit that I was wrong! This has been so so true. Even on the hard days, I find myself more in love with him. Very strange. The only explanation I can think of is….God.

Boys have cooties. Well, I never have been able to identify what a “cootie” is exactly. In kindergarten it’s some sort of undesirable yucky smelly germ that crawls. At age 28, it’s just the realization that there are smells, sounds, and habits whose existence is unknown to women before living 24 hours a day with a boy. Enough said.

Forgive quickly. I’m not sure that I’m a 100% fan of the rule “never go to bed angry”, but I am a 100% fan of the heart behind that rule. Usually, the biggest arguments are over the smallest stuff. Quality of life suffers greatly for us both (no matter which person is the grump) as each angry moment passes. If we can figure out how to relinquish our desire to be right and prove the other person wrong (quite the challenge for us both), then forgiveness is easy. And it’s worth it EVERY time. I’d rather have an hour of good quality time together after eating some humble-pie than an hour of frosty silence as I’m trying to make my point.

What you see is what you get. People always told me not to enter marriage with a plan to change my husband. And I can see why. We were both pretty honest about ourselves in our dating season, and I’ve not been surprised by much in our marriage. Troy is Troy in every way. Same goes for me. Trying to change people is a dangerous undertaking that usually employs manipulation and frustration. It’s been wonderful to be settled in knowing that we really evaluated each other’s strengths and weaknesses long ago, and we’re happily stuck together forever. As is said in Bridget Jones Diary “I love you JUST THE WAY YOU ARE!”

Habits form quickly, so be careful to build a good foundation. Yep. We’ve already developed tons of habits. I make the bed while he brushes his teeth. He hits the snooze button for us 3 times. I make the coffee. He checks the mail and takes out the trash. The list is endless. And our habits of communication and time management are MUCH more important than the coffee or mail-checking. We both have decided to be very intentional about all the habits we’re forming…the future of our relationships depends on it!

The two biggest things that influence who you become as an adult are the person you marry and the congregation you’re a part of. This is a theory developed by a dear friend of mine, and one that I find to be quite true. As I think through my friends who have been married for a while, I can see how they’ve changed and grown. Most often, it’s easy to see how those adjustments are affected by their husbands and churches. I can see it happening in my own life already. Troy’s preferences are becoming my own. The way I look at the Lord and the world is being influenced by the community that I’m in. Makes it that much clearer that these husband/church choices are BIG and IMPORTANT!!

It’ll take 10 years before you really have anything figured out. I was a little too proud to take this one seriously. But happily for us both, I’ve now been humbled. How surprising and reassuring to find that marriage really is a process! We’re better at it now than we were last month, and I know that it’ll take years before we get all the wrinkles ironed out. It’s so encouraging to know that the imperfections are normal. We’re in this for the long haul, and that’s what it’s gonna take!

So, if that last point is true, than this blog entry after 6 months of marriage is just a bumbling and sorry attempt at knowing anything…ask me again in 10 years! All I do know is that I LOVE being married, and I LOVE my husband. I never imagined marriage would be like this. Thanks Jesus.