Dancing Outside the Box

Been thinking about marriage lately.  It is hard.  Of course this is no news to anyone whose been married, or even in a long term relationship.  It's easy to get frustrated with your "significant other," placing blame on them when things don't work out or turn out the way you expected.  For instance, the other night my husband was laying on the couch taking a nap while I cleaned the kitchen.  As I worked, I felt a great temptation to stew over the fact that he was resting while I was cleaning up.  Then I took a step back and made myself (which is never easy) calm down and think "truth" about the situation.  The truth was that my husband had gotten up early with the kids, fed them breakfast, and taken care of them while I slept.  When I awoke, he didn't point fingers or blame me for not getting up with the kids.  He simply asked if I'd slept well.  Amnesia of the heart often happens in situations like these.  I'm tempted to remember only what my husband has not done rather than all that he does do.

Shortly before I was married I asked an older friend, who had been married for many years, if she had any advice for me before I "walked down the aisle."  Later on that week, she sent me a letter sharing her wisdom from over twenty years of experience.  While I don't remember all that she wrote, one thing in particular stuck out to me.  She told me that marriage is rarely 50/50 when it comes to shared responsibilities; sometimes it's 80/20 or even 100/0.  It's a give-and-take relationship, really, and one thing I've learned - it's the give that makes a relationship so difficult.  It's hard to keep it from being a what-am-I getting-out-of-this relationship rather than a what what-am-I-bringing-to-it.  It's about sacrificial love, really.  And making a sacrifice is never easy.

Another thing I've learned in my eight years of marriage is that I can not change my husband; shouldn't even try.  I could talk 'til I was blue in the face, and, believe me, it wouldn't work.  I've tried the nagging tactic too, though that's never produced good results.  A quarrelsome wife, as the proverb says, "Is like a constant dripping."  (Proverbs 19:13)  The subject of quarreling  reminds me of a book I once read.  Having read it before I got married, there's much I've forgotten, but there is one important phrase that sticks with me to this day; it's called "dancing the same dance."  The author was trying to equate fighting (the kind that is counterproductive) to a dance;  a knock-down-drag-out "dance" where careless words are spoken and no one ever wins.  In other words, we never learn that there is more than one way to dance. 

I've learned that, sometimes, to make a point, I need to keep my mouth shut and let God do the "talking".  I find that when I do step back for a moment and gather my thoughts, I approach the argument much more calmly.  Afterall, I don't want to dance the same dance over and over again.  It gets old.  Somewhere along the line, I want to learn to dance outside the box.