Here we are, smack dab in the middle of winter, and if your neighborhood is anything like ours, you don’t see much of the folks next door this time of year. While everyone retreats behind closed doors, and our access to the un-staged side of their lives is limited, we can’t help but grow increasingly aware of the moments in our own lives that don’t make the editing room cut. We are long overdue for a little reminder that everyone has those days when what should have been the excuse to snuggle is quickly replaced with a struggle.
It’s funny how knowing that not every day can be straight out of a fairy tale, and removing that expectation altogether are completely different. I have a good understanding of the fact that “life happens”, yet being the perfectionist/dreamer that I am, there’s a part of me that fights to believe if we work hard enough to have a good attitude, we can make the most out of every situation. While there is a lot to be said about choosing how we look at our circumstances, the truth is, sometimes there is no amount of effort that can prepare you for the disappointment that comes with unmet expectations.
No one likes to be let down. Yet I think it is even worse to be the one letting someone else down. That truth is certainly easy to deny when my spouse fails to meet my expectations; I’m human and caught up in my own feelings. But I tend to reject the thought altogether when I fail to meet his; I am quick to jump to my own defense, rather than (even if just inwardly) admitting the painful reality that I wasn’t good enough.
I want to be good enough. I want to be more than enough. But I would settle for good enough.
For a long time, we focused our efforts on “working harder” at being more for the other person. In reality, what we were doing was giving ourselves a list of things to do, or not to do in order to be good enough. If that was helpful at all, it was simply in getting through longer spans of time between inevitably disappointing one another. But because there is absoluteness to our imperfection, we ultimately cannot sustain this false sense of sufficiency.
Lately, we’ve been learning a lot about the misguided early years of our marriage and have been trying to redirect our efforts toward understanding more about what it means to offer grace and forbearance in those times. A big part of that has been facing our own shortcomings rather than looking at the others’ and to be honest, both of us can say it has been a humbling process.
But that’s the nature of growth, I suppose. It’s a process, and even though at times it feels as though it would just be easier to slap a mask on our inadequacies, we know firsthand the benefits that come with actually doing the work far outweigh the immediate gratification of deceiving ourselves.
It isn’t always easy, and there are times we downright fail at our attempts at bettering ourselves and our marriage. But there is a truth we came across in our reading today that helps us rest in a place where we can continuously forgive one another and ourselves for just how far from perfection we really are.
“God took the record of all your sins… and instead of holding them up in front of your face … put them in the palm of his Son’s hand and drove a spike through them into the cross. It is a bold and graphic statement: He canceled the record of our debt . . . nailing it to the cross (Col. 2:14).”
Excerpt From: John Piper. “This Momentary Marriage.”
-m
