I’m emotional, he’s logical.
I’m tragic, he’s unaffected.
I’m lively, he’s thoughtful.
I’m dramatic, he’s steady.
I’m silly, he laughs at me.
I’m impulsive, he’s patient.
I’m needful, he’s generous of heart.
I’m entirely devoted, he’s grateful.
I’m a mess, he’s a mess, and God lovingly holds our world together.
A marriage of two people who are very different can be challenging. Becoming one with another person can be like trying to train a cat to do tricks it hates to do. Scratch and claw, squawk and hiss, no one wants to change when they feel they’re being forced.
We are generally certain that if our spouse could just become a little more similar to us, everything would be perfectly wonderful. But that isn’t how it works.
Marriage is meant to make us more like God, not more like each other. Love is the golden carrot hanging just on the other side of humility and the courageous hearts find their way to it eventually.
Wuthering Heights has long been one of my favorite books. This quote from it has been ringing in my head of late:
“He’s more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.” ― Emily Brontë
The longer we love one another, the more time God has to shave away all the selfishness we use to protect us from this broken world, and the more our souls become woven into God’s faithfulness. We become united in His love, and a life without this marriage seems more and more foreign as we lose our preference for our own needs.
Time passes and we change a great deal as we pass through the keyhole of faith in God in this haggard world of sin. But as long as we are together, he and I will be just fine.
Because he and I, we are meant to walk together. This path we take in God has never been easy, but it has always been paved by a love that held us securely.
And in the end, I will bow in God’s presence and thank him for the fantastic man he placed beside me, who has loved me more than I deserve to be loved, and who helps me to believe that in the end, every little thing will work out.
Because, after all, he and I are so very loved for real, for true, and for always.
