Hi, friend! As you're reading this, my man and I are sailing the seven seas (okay, just one sea) celebrating our first wedding anniversary. In celebration, I wanted to have a few of my favorite ladies write about love and marriage while I'm away! Without further ado, here is my lovely friend, Cassie, from Sage!
Hello there Sew My Soul readers! I am so happy to be with you all today while Kaitlin is off celebrating her one year anniversary! My name is Cassie and I blog at Sage. I'm a newlywed and west coaster recently transplanted to the Midwest. My blog reflects my passion for marriage and my faith, and includes a little of the in between as well. I'm honored to be here today and I hope you'll stop by sometime to visit me at my blog!
When we first got married, I had many expectations for what a godly marriage should look like. I had preconceived notions of what it meant for my husband to lead me, how our prayer life would look, and how we would make Jesus the center of our home. And guess what? I spent the first few months of our marriage feeling like we were doing it wrong. Like we were failing. But were we really failing? The answer is absolutely not. We just weren't exactly meeting the expectations I had put upon us.
Where did those expectations come from? Comparison. Comparison with other women and their marriages. Comparison with media. Comparison ALL AROUND. Comparing your marriage to others is toxic, and I know that first hand.
In the blog world, we see perfectly staged instagram photos of women laying in bed with their husbands on Saturday morning, Starbucks in hand. We see professional photographs of women cooking in their kitchens with their husbands for those not so original "home shoots." We see perfectly tidy kitchen tables where women sit and read their bible, pray over their marriages, and journal about how perfect their husband is.
What we forget, however, is that we don't see the other parts of marriage. We don't see videos of the fights over the laundry. We don't see the pile of dishes in the sink waiting to be washed. We don't see unmade beds and dusty bibles. Because that wouldn't portray our marriage well to the outside world, would it?
Comparing your marriage to someone else's is guaranteed to rob you of your joy and leave you feeling down. No one's marriage looks the same, and that's perfectly alright. Sure, it's great to look up to women with healthy, biblical relationships, but it's also important to not let that go too far.
My husband might not like to lay in bed with me all Saturday morning so that we can stage the perfect instagram photo, but he sure likes to beat me out of bed and make coffee and pancakes. Our kitchen might not always be photo ready, but it's sure full of a lot of good food and fun. I might not always clean off my kitchen table, pray like I should over my marriage, or journal about how perfect my husband is, but I sure as hell make sure to spend quality time with my husband every night, even if only for an hour. And our prayer life might look different then yours, but we pray and that's what matters.
Although my marriage might not look like that of other women, I am content with that. I'm learning a marriage doesn't have to look a certain way to be happy, healthy, and focused on Jesus. We all do things a little differently, and that's what makes marriage fun.
As we enter into 2015, I challenge you to examine what areas of your marriage you might be comparing to another marriage. If it's a healthy comparison, I pray that you would strive to better your relationship in that way. If it's not a healthy comparison, I pray that you would break free of the chains that holding you from embracing the marriage that God designed for YOU and realize that it doesn't have to look like anyone else's to be perfect for you.
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