pray. - Be the Perfect in Their Imperfections

Throughout my young life, I watched marriage after marriage fail. I've witnessed marriages fail due to physical, mental, and emotional abuse. I've witnessed marriages fail due to mental illnesses such as addiction and bipolar disorder. I've witnessed marriages fail due to infidelity. I've witnessed marriages fail due to finances. I've witnessed marriages fail due to lies, disagreements, and stubbornness. I've witnessed marriages fail due to changes in sexuality or sexual preferences. 

Growing up, there weren't many healthy marriages around me. Working in a family law office during graduate school, I was inundated with unhealthy and failed  marriages. I remember sitting in the office filing paperwork one day, examining the dates of marriages and divorces. More than 50% of the clients that stepped into our office were filing for divorce within 10 years and a majority of those clients were filing for divorce within 5 or less years. 

At age 32, I look around and see friends and friends of friends experiencing divorce only after a couple years of marriage. I see a majority of young children being raised in single parent homes. I watch the news and hear about another wife or husband murdered by their spouse. I stand in line at grocery stores and am blinded by the tabloids marketing broken celebrity marriages as a means to sale more copies and make more money. 

Sometimes, situations do not work out the way we envision them, because people aren't always who we envision them to be. Some people are better actors and liars than others, and they are able to suck good people into their hellish whirlwind of a life. Mistakes happen. Shit happens. Things fall apart sometimes. We may fight like hell and still lose the battle. It's life, and sometimes, there's absolutely nothing we could have done to change the outcome. 

However, what I'm finding as I grow older, and as society molds into this hideous monstrosity of abnormally selfish individuals, is relationships mean less and less to people. Marriages aren't sacred anymore. People aren't taking marriage serious. People are selfish in marriages. They aren't living up to their end of the vows - in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, or until death do us part. It's as if those vows are empty words coming from an empty heart. Just words. No meaning. No sincerity. 

Those who surrounded me as a young lady always told me soulmates didn't exist. I'm sure many of them still believe it. But, being the incredibly hard headed young lady I am, I didn't take their word for it. 

I am not an expert on marriage and relationships. But, I saw enough unhealthy ones in my time to know what wouldn't work for me. I never agreed to settle. I never got impatient - though it was very difficult at times to watch others falling in love while I was the token single friend. I knew what I wasn't looking for, and believe me, that filtered out a lot of prospects. I had even settled on the fact that I could be single forever. And, ladies, it's ok to be a single, independent female. Take pride in your independence and the ability to take care of yourself without a man. 

Compared to most ladies in the south, I'm a late bloomer. I didn't get married until I was 30. I'm 32 and have no plans of having children in the near future. When I look back, all my relationship woes make perfect sense. It wasn't until my late 20s that I started to really know who I was and what I stood for. If I didn't know who I was, how could anyone else possibly get to know who I was? I was broken from the inside out. When I started to heal on my own and started to love myself, God sent me my match, and I wasn't even looking for him. What I learned - I had to be able to live life with me, before I could live life with anyone else. 

Matt and I dated for four years before we got engaged. We were in no hurry to get engaged and have a big wedding. We moved at our own pace - even when everyone else kept poking and prodding at the idea of marriage. I was willing to just be together for the rest of our lives without the ring, without the wedding. We were both happy just living life together. But, when we decided to get married, we just made it happen. Engaged at the end of May. Wedding planned and married by the beginning of August. Two full months to plan a wedding and make it official. It was perfect. More perfect than my wildest dreams. We made it about US and not about everyone else. 

We didn't enter our marriage with $20,000 plus of debt from a one day celebration that other people would enjoy. We planned our day for US. And, two years later, we continue to plan our life for US.

Life isn't all about him or all about me. Sure, we have our own hobbies and interests and groups of friends. But, we work really hard at making it all work for the both of us. It isn't easy sometimes. There are moments when I want to be selfish and make it all about me, but I vowed to love him, and when you love someone, until death do you part, you don't flake out on them. You serve them. 

Service isn't always easy. It can be work sometimes. Think about any service in life - service to God, service to your children, service to your job, service to your extended family, service to your friends, service to the general public (when someone does something incredibly disgusting or rude and you feel like punching them in the face - but you service them and bite your tongue and withhold your desire to punch them in the face), service to your community. All of these services take effort. The more effort you put in, the greater the reward you get in return. The more effort you put into serving your spouse and your marriage the greater the rewards. 

My neighbor has complimented my husband's service to me. He always opens the car door for me. He always tries to beat me to the back of the car when we've gone grocery shopping, so I carry in less bags than him. He changes the oil in my car. He cooks me dinner most nights. He tucks me into bed every night - even though he stays up later than me. He takes care of me when I'm sick. He kisses me on the forehead just because. He writes notes for our memory jar. He looks at me and blushes. He respects my opinions and supports all of my crazy dreams and projects. He takes me on surprise dates. He sends me random texts throughout the day to make me smile. He's at the finish line of all my big races. He makes me feel beautiful even when I have no make-up on, and I feel like a hot mess. He always makes me feel like the sexiest woman in the room, in the restaurant, in the world. He listens to me complain and hugs me tight when I cry. He makes me laugh. He loves my mom, my sisters, and my family (even though they're all bat shit crazy). His service to me inspires my service to him. 

When others do nice things for you, you want to do nice things for them. When and how did we lose sight of this? When did serving your spouse become just another thing on the checklist of things to do? When did rocky and dramatic marriages become headlines and reality t.v. shows? Why do we stand back and allow divorce to be the norm? Why aren't people standing up for love anymore? Why are people giving up on soulmates and settling for someone who doesn't compliment or complete them? Why are people so afraid of being alone in life that they rush into relationships and marriages and risk it falling apart and breaking up a family? 

Sure, you're going to make mistakes along the way. As perfect as we may think we are, perfection doesn't exist in humans. No marriage is going to perfect all of the time. Learn from your mistakes. Don't blame each other for the imperfections. Work through the imperfections together. Be the perfect in their imperfections.