Don't let the title fool you. I'm so very happy I married Drew and I love him more now than I did on January 4th when we said our vows.
But this isn't the honeymoon stage.
So many times when people ask how long we've been married and I respond "a little over 8 months," they always say, "Oh, you guys are still on your honeymoon!" And I laugh a little but inside, I'm thinking, no, we aren't.
Our first 8 months have been full of happy memories. But it has also been an enormous learning curve. And when two people are learning a lot and going through many life changes all at once, it's rough. There are 2 a.m. fights. There are tears. There is exasperation. There is frustration and confusion. But there is grace. Oh, so much grace.
Getting married is no joke. And the honeymoon stage for us was on our honeymoon. Barely even then. Our first fight was on our wedding night, because I was very sick and Drew wanted to go to the hospital but I wanted to go to sleep so I could wake up better and go on our honeymoon. I won that one, and we had a great trip even though I had no voice and a terrible cough that lasted over a month.
Moving in together and learning to share space and make decisions together was so difficult. Sharing a bed for the first time in my life was awful. I didn't sleep well for the first two months and I was so frustrated every night and every morning because I couldn't get comfortable, I wasn't getting enough covers, he was so hot in his sleep, and he took up the whole bed. And not sleeping makes me beyond irritable. We struggled. A lot.
I came into marriage with serious intimacy issues. I struggled to be my most vulnerable. I struggled to relax. I struggled to be physically intimate. It did not come naturally. Vulnerability and intimacy are so necessary in marriage, and yet I was unwilling to give them readily. And Drew needed that from me, and was hurt by my reluctance to let him in. So we struggled.
Then, after two months of sharing an apartment, we found out our lease had been misfiled and we had to move. Throw finding a new place to live in a hurry on top of not sleeping well, not being used to sharing space, and not being used to having to make decisions with another person and not on your own, and you're in for it. Then the actual move happened, and one of our cars completely died and needed to be replaced immediately but we had to take on a car payment to do so and neither one of us wanted that debt, and packing and unpacking and money and navigating the new space and setting it up...we struggled some more.
During this time, Drew was also in a stressful point in grad school and had to drop a class so that he would be able to do well in school as well as manage all the crazy things happening in our daily life. He was stressed about school, I didn't understand how much pressure he felt between classes and work, and expected a lot more romance than I was actually getting, and we struggled even more.
Suddenly summer was here. I hate summer heat. I don't do well in it, it makes me sick frequently, and I now live in the hottest part of the state. And I only moved here because I fell in love with a man who had to live here for his job and education. Throw into that an a/c unit that was broken 50% of the time and could never seem to be fixed, and my frustration grew. So we had more struggle.
The first 8 months of marriage were not the honeymoon stage for us. The first year of marriage so far has been hard, hard work. We've had to learn so much so quickly and have had to take on new challenges in very short periods of time.
We've fought in the middle of the night. We've fought first thing in the morning before going to work and had to end the discussion before it was over because we had to go about our days. We have had some really hard days.
All of that said, our marriage is a whole lot deeper now than it would be had we been smooth sailing and on cloud nine for the whole first year. Those middle of the night arguments leaving me thinking "Oh my gosh what did I just sign up for for the rest of my life?" have made everything about our love that much deeper.
It is so easy to take things in life for granted when you're looking through rose colored glasses. It is so easy to ignore the hard work when you're too focused on bliss. It is so easy to expect perfect joy when you're not facing the hard things.
But when the first year isn't the honeymoon stage you expected, it isn't so easy. However, it is so worth it.
When you've had a terrible fight that has gone on so long you don't even know why you're fighting anymore, but you're still too angry to stop, the intensity with which you just fought will be brought into the intensity with which you love.
When you've broken down crying because there have been one too many road blocks in the way of your plans and you are just too overwhelmed to face anymore, the same tears will be shed in joy when the sun finally comes out, and the tears of joy will come more readily when you remember how much love you feel towards the man you're sleeping next to.
When you've gone through the days of wondering how in the heck you're going to do this forever, your heart will be filled with a much greater love and respect for your husband.
And when marriage has been so much harder than you ever thought it would be in the first year, your understanding of grace and the way God truly loves you is much, much deeper.
God's love is undying. We fight him on it daily. We argue with him, we decide we know better, we pull away, we want to do things our way. We think we can handle it on our own. And he sits there, still loving us, still strong, still constant. He waits for us to remember. He doesn't turn His back. He gives limitless grace, no matter how much we sin against him.
And that's what marriage is like. No matter how bad that fight was, we're still here. No matter how long we've gone without sleep, we're still in this. No matter how long it took me to get comfortable with intimacy and vulnerability, Drew was still vulnerable with me, constantly showing me I was safe with him. No matter how many trials we faced, we were still in it. No matter how much we sinned against each other, we actively chose love and grace.
Because marriage is but a shadow of the mirror image of God's love for us it was originally meant to be. And we know that God's love is endless. We can test it as much as we want, pull away from it as hard as we can, and he's never going to give up on us. He's never going to turn away. His grace knows no bounds. And with every hurdle we face in marriage, with every tear shed, with every unkind word spoken, we learn more about what true love means. We learn what it means to give and receive grace.
And it's beautiful. When you find boundless grace in your marriage, the love you feel and share grows so much more.
I love Drew more today than I ever did before. And I love him that much more because our honeymoon phase ended with our honeymoon. But I'm so glad it did. If it hadn't, I wouldn't feel so much more love for my Savior. If it hadn't I wouldn't understand so much more of how He loves me. If it hadn't, I wouldn't appreciate the beautiful friendship I now have with my husband or how much grace the Lord gives me.
If our honeymoon stage lasted past our honeymoon, our marriage wouldn't be as strong or deep as it is today, and our faith wouldn't be as deep as it is now.
God gives us so much grace, friends. So much. And I didn't fully realize it until after "I do" became "what did I do?"
So, if you think you're supposed to be on your honeymoon still because it's only the first year, let me be the one to tell you...it's okay that you aren't. It is okay that your marriage is off to a rough start. It is okay that you didn't know what you were getting into. It is okay that it is really hard really early.
This thing we're doing called marriage is no joke. But it is the most beautiful thing we can do because it is teaching us more and more every day just how much the Lord loves us and just how much grace can cover.
Did your first year of marriage go smoothly, or was it like ours has been, rough but still beautiful?
