Waking Up on the Shelf

Marriage is all about ME!

This is exactly the way I felt when I got married almost 13 years ago, and it’s exactly the way I feel today, with several major tweaks. 

When I was a kid, I gathered most of my ideals of marriage from watching how in love my parents were (and incredibly still are after 45 years), being totally slain by romantic novels and movies, images portrayed by Hollywood in magazine racks, and just from watching others in love. I was a biased student of it.  Love was good.  It made you feel good.  It made you feel special and giddy; it saved you from all of life's problems, and I couldn’t wait to have it.  Completely. 

So I fell head over heels for every. single. guy that came across my path – well, almost every guy, the cute ones mainly.  I would make actual lists in my diaries of all my true loves and a separate list of all the ones that were undoubtedly wild about me.  I still have those lists.  I basked in the special, warm, soupy feeling it gave me.  It was intoxicating.  It was all I could think about.  When was I going to find that ONE special guy that would love me for me and I for him?  Perfectly matched, equal, requited love that never ever ends, that someday-my-prince-will-come kind of love.  I dreamt of it.  I rehearsed all of Disney's iconic songs about it.  [I still know "So This is Love" and every song on the Cinderella score in their entirety.  Impressed?  My mom bought us the book on tape, so she gets all the credit.]  I imagined myself dancing in the arms of Prince Charming or being awakened from life's poisoned slumber by true love's first kiss and then dancing in the arms of said prince into the sunset of my life.  I was obsessed, totally consumed with the idea of this magical, all-consuming thing called love. 

Naturally, every relationship fell short of that ideal.  From the Kindergarten peck over the lunch table to my first real kiss in high school, no boy could ever possibly embody my dreams of true love.  They did at first.  Each one was like fireworks.  I just knew he was Mr. Right and tried his last name on for size on every homework paper or diary entry or scrap of paper I could find.  But without fail all the boys I fell madly in love with didn't end up feeling anywhere the same about me, and those I was only sorta crazy about, I dumped.  There was never that equally matched love I envisioned; it was always unrequited.

And somehow every relationship was all about ME and how I felt, whether devastated or dreamy.  It was never about him, really.  I tried to be what I thought was his everything.  But mostly it was about me.  How was this serving ME? my needs? my desires?  How was he at performing Prince Charming roles?  I was the princess in the tower after all, clearly needing to be ransomed.

Then one day he walked into my life. He was the prince of my dreams. It took years of sour relationships and broken hearts.  I didn’t find him until I was 26.  And considering I was looking for him before I could read, that’s a long time in princess years.  He wasn’t perfect, but I had been through enough relationships that I knew there was no such thing, and it didn't matter because I loved him.  I looooooved him.  Or so I thought I loved him.

We married a year and a half after we met. I was on top of the world, particularly in the first few months.  Married life seemed to tick every box I had studiously collected over the years.  It was hard to believe my life had actually become the sequel to "The Sound of Music" [minus the seven children, of course].  In no time at all, reality crashed the party, and I began to see the not-so-shiny armor my knight actually wore.  Never once did I question how perfect I was.  I was real.  I knew I wasn’t perfect, but there was no way I was as defective as he was. [Obviously, I'm a HUGE fan of humble pie.]

And my unhappiness flourished with each page-flip of the calendar.

Then one day, six years and two babies in, I was driving in the car with my dad, and I whimpered, “Dad . . . I’m just not happy in my marriage anymore.”  I winced, waiting for the hammer to fall.  I was clueless how he would respond; I knew that as a pastor, he would likely not be on my side of the mountain on this, but I had already dumped my despairing love story in the lap of a close friend just days before, and she had no idea how to deal the blow.  So I came to him because I knew he would slap me with the truth [as he almost. always. does], and I was sure I was ready for it. 

“You think God had you marry Eric so that you could be HAPPY?!” 

His words hit me like a freight train. 

“God’s sole mission, His main purpose for you in this marriage is for you to become more like HIM, not for you to be happy.” 

Wow.  Thanks, Dad.  Way to put it out there.

Of course. 

Huge. paradigm. shift.

How could this be what marriage was? what love was? It’s not that I didn’t know what God said about love in I Corinthians 13, but that was for plutonic relationships.  It didn’t really apply to romantic love, did it?  This is what love really means? It means my becoming more and more like Him because of the practice of patience, kindness, and many other "me"-less qualities I so plainly lack?  It's not about wild butterflies in my stomach or an I-am-so-amazingly-special feeling or about being swept off my feet by damsel-in-distress rescues? 

I had to stand way back from myself.  In fact, I had to put myself and all of my princess baggage completely on the shelf.  My marriage was not about serving my needs; it wasn’t really even about serving his.  It was about a metamorphosis.  In fact, none of the relationships in my life were about me, not in the way I had pictured.  They were about Him.  They were there as a training ground, a crucible for my character.  An ugly light was turned on, the kind that doesn't flatter curves in dressing rooms.  Truth is not always easy to look at.

My marriage, the culmination of relationships in my life, is really about me and what I need to become.  But it is more than that.  Jesus is that idyllic Prince I so long for in my life, the one I hold to impossibly high standards.  He's the only one that meets every single box I thought up and infinitely more.  But He's the servant Prince, not like any other character designed by Disney, and . . . He loves me. Me. ME.  And there is nothing I can do to earn that matchless love.  Incredible.   

So that was the day long ago [okay, almost seven years] I woke up from disillusioned slumber to discover that my paradigm, the box that held this unrealistic standard of love, was completely skewed and that my character was just as flawed (if not more) as the prince with whom I walked down the aisle. 

And I've finally taken off the crown. It’s been almost seven years of going crownless.  I still have very little idea of how to operate without one or what it means to be a servant like Him, but each day is waiting for me to practice.

[[Happiness in marriage is not my focus in this post, nor did I intend it to be. Does that mean marriage shouldn't bring happiness?  No.  I still believe that marriage is the romantic ending to every love story and that you should be -- like I am -- happy and in love with the prince/princess He gives you.  But there have definitely been times that I haven't been happy, times I felt miserable, times I thought not being married at all would just be better for everyone, but mostly myself. There will be times in many marriage relationships where one or the other feels like they want out. They are moments of focusing on self and how "I" feel. But I'm finally learning the hard way that He wants me to take the focus off of me and make everything, including my marriage and every single relationship I have, to be about Him and becoming the servant that He was.  And in slowly moving past the "me" focus in my marriage, when I feel like I'm drowning in tough times -- and there will be tough times! -- I look at Him and hold onto the anchor that He's changing me through those tough times. And happiness -- better yet, pure joy -- comes in this! But my definition of being "in love" has changed into something far different and better than it was before, something more real and tangible, more about what I do and less about what I "feel," the glue that makes me stay "in" it.  But whether or not I'm happy in my marriage is not the focus of my post nor my moment-by-moment pulse check because it's still the wrong focus -- ME.]]