Jonnese and I met each other my senior year of high school. There’s no way I would’ve predicted that years later, at the young age of 20, I would be married! If you knew me at all, just the thought of that is insane! My relationships didn’t last more than three months, life was one big party constantly lived for the moment and I was nowhere near a healthy, stable or mature state to be responsible for other lives let alone my own highly dysfunctional self.
I should’ve been the last of my friends to settle down and be serious about marriage and this whole “starting a family” thing. In fact, I thought it was a joke! The pursuit I had for my life was for the pleasure and success of me. But as we all know, God tends to have extremely different plans.
Anyone who’s had children or married young will tell you, it challenges you to grow up and mature pretty quickly. Not everyone does, but any sincere person who cares for the well being of their child and spouse has to make changes and make them immediately for their survival; mentally and physically.
Although I never planned to get married and have a family young I don’t at all regret it. I thank God because my family saved me from the destructive path I was on, reeled me in and molded me into a better person for so many reasons.
Marriage has taught me:
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To Accept Differences
Sure everyone is different, we know that much. Different races, personalities and backgrounds are things we briefly encounter day to day. But what happens when you have to live with those differences every day and it affects you in a personal way.
Well, honestly you’re forced to understand, respect and work those differences out if your marriage is going to have any chance of surviving. Because you will be more different than you thought!
In the beginning its cute. It’s interesting! Its no big deal. Until you realize you handle struggles differently, you communicate differently which creates barriers when conflict arises or now you have kids and raise them differently based on your individual backgrounds. Differences can easily create conflict in the home. What was once tolerable shortly becomes intolerable when it imposes on your life personally.
Marriage forces you to identify those differences, come to a full understanding of one another and mutually agree on how to work through them on a day to day basis to gain a common goal; a healthy growing family. When you can master this in your home, it’s only preparation for being able to deal with the differences we will face in our world in a positive manner.
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To Forgive the Unforgivable
Let face it, human mistakes won’t end just because you said “I do.” We’ve been raised on fairy-tale endings of happily ever after, but what really did Snow White and Prince Charming face long after they rode into the sunset?
Perfection and completion finishing at the altar of marriage just isn’t reality. In fact, your spouse may disappoint you a number of times as you will them. As imperfect humans we make mistakes, we learn, we grow from them. And boy is marriage a life lesson of learning and growing.
When you’re in a marriage, two become one, and so everything they do directly affects you. There’s no equal unity so closely bonded like a marriage. No relationship we ever have is like our marriage and so we may have never experienced this dynamic where every choice, no matter how big or how small, one person makes impacts our own life every time in such a personal way.
That includes their mistakes. They will mess up. They will do things the wrong way. They will say the wrong things at the wrong time. They will make you question how this will continue to work this way.
That’s what happens when two imperfect people come together. They become an imperfect couple. But grace is the substance that makes the unworkable, somehow work. So we forgive and we grow again and again and again.
And just when it seems like we got it, we do it all over again. It is the God kind of love that keeps marriages fueled. When we can master the act of grace in our homes, from experience we’re taught how to extend constant grace towards others in the outside world.
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To Not be Reactive
Reactive behavior is when our choices and behaviors are dependent on the choices and behaviors of others rather than us being responsible for our own selves. Thing like, “they made me act this way” or “maybe if they didn’t do this then I wouldn’t have done this”. It absolves us of all responsibility for ourselves. It’s when our behavior is determined by and reacts base on someone else. Reactive people are ruled by feelings and conditions.
On the other hand proactive people don’t blame others or circumstances for their behavior but act from their own conscious choice based on their values. They determine to focus their efforts on the positive things they can do to shift the situation.
For example, I’m not going to curse you out just because you cursed me out. That doesn’t align with the foundational values I stand on in my life and so I choose to not be reactive by letting your actions determine my own.
When you’re married, again, everything the other person does always affects you personally just from being one and sharing the same living space every day; from their behavior, reactions, language, word choice, etc. In every healthy relationship at some point someone has to choose peace and the bigger picture over being “right”. That’s choosing not to be proactive and not reactive.
If you want your marriage to survive you soon find that retaliation, revenge and pushing buttons back goes nowhere but down. So you quickly learn, or need to learn, the self-discipline of not being reactive. When we can master the choice to not be reactive based on the behaviors of others we can then go out into the world making positive changes rather than conforming to every negative circumstance.
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To Commit to a Life of Sacrifice
Marriage is sacrifice period. Biblically both leave their families and cleave to one another to begin a new family. The wife submits to the headship of her husband and the husband lays down his life to accommodate his wife time and time again. There’s this ongoing balance of sacrifice consistently being made.
There’s this quote I love that says, “Great marriages are made when husbands and wives make a lot of everyday choices that say ‘I love you’ rather than choices that say ‘I love me’.
And the truth is, in order for any relationship to work there has to be a mutual willingness to sacrifice for one another otherwise it becomes one sided and the other person will soon feel taken advantage of. That kind of model will collapse and won’t last long anytime someone feels unappreciated or unnoticed.
Marriage takes financial sacrifices, sacrificing what I want to do for what you want to do, sacrificing self-fulfilling desires, sacrificing time and much more. You’ve made a vow to commit your life to this person as your partner and you as their support through good and bad till death do you part. And every day you are dedicating to upkeep this vow mostly out of the goodness of love. Learning to make these kinds of sacrifices, putting another’s life and interests before your own, day in and day out teaches you tremendously the heart of sacrifice when it comes to those around you.
When I look back on the person I use to be and was headed towards I can honestly say that marriage has kept me grounded and matured me. It has made me a better human being in general because of the way its molded my heart to learn how to work through and accept the differences of others, to extend grace a midst mistakes, to maintain a positive reaction and live a life of sacrifice. Sometimes we focus so heavy on being ready for marriage that we don’t realize many times it’s the marriage that shapes us.
Was this helpful and is there anything marriage has taught you in growing to become a better person? Don’t be afraid to comment below! I’d love to hear back from you.