This week's Wordful Wednesday is Unity in Marriage...how do you keep unity in your marriage, how do you decide who does what, how do you keep close...
I think that unity in marriage grows as your marriage grows. You learn as you go. I know when we started out, with my husband just starting school, myself being self employed...we went through some hard times both financially and emotionally. (I remember thinking "Why doesn't he just go home...oh ya, he lives here now!) But, we had made a commitment to each other, and one of those commitments was to work it out together. So as we got through each little disagreement, each month of scraping the bottom of the piggybank. We learned to work together.
We were married for 4 years when we moved to California. We had prayed about it and we knew it was the right thing for us...but I don't think we realized how hard it would be on us. Especially me. With my husband feeling the stress of the new job, trying to learn all he could everyday, and myself trying to learn how to function WITHOUT going to work, WITHOUT friends or family around...I had myself a little pity party. And I thought alot about what I was doing WITHOUT. I took it out on my husband with alot of tears and arguing about how bad I had it...until a girl at church was asking me about moving away from family and such, and said that she told her husband that "As long as we were together, we were family. And that's all I needed." I realized how right she was. I HAD my family. My wonderful husband, my beautiful kids, I HAD so much to be thankful for, and nothing to pout about.
When I started thinking about my life in that perspective, I realized how wonderful my husband was. What a great person he was, what a great Dad he was to my children, what a great friend he was to me. And I began to talk to him more. Not argue about everything, TALK. I would tell him if I was mad or upset or sad about somethings, but I would also tell him the good things, and more important, we would TALK. Like adults. And we started to grow alot closer, because the closest friend we had was each other.
As sad as it makes me that we are so far from our extended family and friends, I am so grateful for the blessing it has been to me, and our marriage, to move this far away. We have had to learn to lean on one another for support. We have learned to talk and most things we can get out in the open without arguing openly about it. (We are both also terrible at 'pouting', when something bothers us, but now it doesn't last long!) We have grown close because we work together and we talk about everything. Sometimes I talk alot and he just listens...or at least pretends to until I get it off my chest! But we TALK and I think that is the most important thing about our marriage. And now that we have learned to talk, I've learned that sometimes you don't need to talk to be close. Sometimes you just need to be together to be close.

