Fun Fact: Sometimes John and I Fight a Lot

When I decided to begin a blog, one of the goals was to be honest about my life — not because anybody would necessary care about my life — but because I think it’s nice to know you are not alone.

It’s nice to know that other people struggle like you do.  Not nice like, “Hah! So happy she’s actually miserable”, but more like, “Wow, we all have our struggles, and if she can overcome them — then so can I”.

That’s the kind of nice I was hoping to bring to the blogosphere.

Sometimes, people will look at me and think I have things together because I can write about them — but the truth is, I’m just trying my lousy best.

Yes, I choose to write about the beautiful stuff on a regular basis, but that is not to say that every part of my life is absolutely beautiful all the time.

Take my relationship with John, for example.  Some people might be surprised to know that sometimes we fight a lot.  That’s right.  We do.

We really do, but the thing is I love the guy.  I love him so much that when I start to see a pattern that is troubling to me, or hear words come out of his mouth that I don’t like, this girl is going to speak up.

I’m going to speak up because I’m in it until death do us part — I’m invested — and being invested means that sometimes we’re going to have to have a fight in order to resolve our differences.

Think about it, take two passionate people with entirely different personalities and upbringings and put them together — you are bound to have some explosions every once in a while.

To be honest, our “fights” are not that disturbing to me. I come from a big family of crazy fighters.  I grew up with a lot of scrappers in my house.

Heated discussions happening around the dinner table were just a part of our lives, and I’ve grown up thinking that fighting was sometimes a part of the process of resolving things.

I still feel that way to a great degree.  Though I agree we need to “fight fair” and try not to say mean, unkind things we’ll later regret — I think the process of hashing things out is a very healthy thing.

For John, though, he didn’t necessarily grow up seeing parents fight and make up like I did — so our fights bother him more than they do me.

It’s very understandable.  I need to try to understand him more, and he needs to try to understand me more.

We both came to this marriage with different ideas of how things were supposed to be. We are just about the complete opposites of each other in almost every way.

We took the FOCUS test before we were married, and we basically failed it. If you aren’t familiar with it, the FOCUS test looks at your levels of agreement on the issues that often cause the greatest stress in a marriage.

I remember looking at that sweet Deacon as he looked at us and said, “Well, there’s no such thing as failing this test — but that being said, I have never seen a lower level of compatibility in any couple I’ve ever seen”.

Yep, we were the biggest “non-failing” failures that test had ever seen.

Perhaps that should have scared the daylights out of us, but for some reason, we both took it as a sign that God would pour His grace out on the least compatible couple the Catholic Church had ever known.

With hope in our hearts, we both agreed our marriage would be a testimony to the grace of the Sacrament of Marriage.

I have to say, it really has been that for us.  Our hope has not met disappointment.

In fact, we never imagined the beauty that being so different could bring to a marriage.  We never anticipated how our opposite approaches to life would help us in raising our children.  Our differences are actually quite complementary — who knew?

Here is where the challenge comes, though.  If we’re not opening ourselves up to God’s grace every single day, this marriage can get a little bit rocky.

The second we close ourselves off to that amazing grace — we have a bit of a mess on our hands.

Lent was particularly trying for us.  Maybe it’s because we found ourselves disagreeing about numerous things, with very little resolution.

Usually, we have an argument and we come to some resolution — but this Lent, we seemed to be missing the resolution.  Maybe it’s because we were so dang busy.

Sometimes life just gets busy, and you begin to sweep a lot of things under the rug — which is fine for a while — but eventually if you don’t address those things under the rug, you just might break your neck on it.

This Lent, God made it very clear that we needed to stop sweeping things under the rug and take a good look at them.  It was a good reminder that failing to invest in our marriage can eventually lead to a bit of a mess.

So what do you do when you begin to wonder if this time, you just won’t reach a resolution? How do you love that person when you seriously just want to punch them in the face — just being real, people.  What do you do?

Well, first you look at your spouse and blame it all on him. Yep, he’s the problem not you.  You go with that idea for a few days, but you’ll soon realize you just aren’t peaceful about it and you’ll be ready for the real work.

Then you look at yourself and your own life and you see where you’ve been failing your spouse.  Start working on your own stuff, but don’t do it alone.  Ask God to work in the mess. Pray for your spouse.  Pray for your marriage.

Beg God to pour out His grace on the situation.  Then march yourself down to confession and ask your spouse to do the same.

Draw on that grace because, especially if you have kids, your marriage is the single greatest source of their happiness in the world.  I don’t know why that is the way it is, but I know that is true.

If you don’t feel like doing it for each other — do it for your kids.

But back to John and I.  After our rocky Lent, John was suggesting that maybe we needed counseling.  I suggested that maybe he needed counseling and that I would attend if needs be — oh, and to look at his relationship with his mother while he was at it.

Oh no, I didn’t.  Yes, sadly, I did. Technically, that might fall under the “not fighting fair” category. 🙁

After that didn’t come off too well, and I actually had time to think about it,  I suggested we take the money we would use for a counseling session and go off for a nice dinner together.

I suggested we grab a notebook and talk about what’s been going wrong and attempt to make some resolutions to change those things.

That’s what we did.  We talked about the challenges.  We talked about those things that have been bugging us about the other person and we wrote down some practical resolutions which we’ve already put into practice.

Have we solved all of our problems?  Heck no, but we have made a lot of progress.  A big factor to a happy marriage is making what’s important to the other person important to you.  We have made it clear to each other that we are willing to work on those things that need some tweaking.

On my engagement ring, John engraved a latin phrase, “Semper altius”, which means “always higher”.  From the beginning, John wanted us to aim higher — to not just accept mediocrity, but to really work at making our relationship beautiful.

This little dinner away was our practical attempt at keeping that goal in mind. It seems so simple, but it really seems to have impacted the both of us in a very positive way.

We love each other, and we love our crazy crew and we’re not going to give up on making this marriage an amazing life-giving reality for us and our kids.

It doesn’t have to be complicated.  Just get away to a quiet place and try to prayerfully hash things out.

This is not to down-play counseling.  Counseling can be a great thing, but so can drawing on the grace of the Sacrament of your marriage.

Marriage is the only Sacrament in the Church where the spouses are the ministers of the sacrament.  Why are we not drawing on the ocean of mercy and strength that God is just waiting to pour out on us?  It’s right at our fingertips.

That ocean of mercy is just waiting there for all of us, and it will never run dry.  So jump in, people.  Just do it.  You won’t regret it.

If God can take two truly incompatible, head-strong, and flawed individuals and do something beautiful with their marriage — He most certainly can do that for you, too.

Just believe in His grace and draw on it and wait to see the amazing things that God can do with your marriage.

Trust me, if we can do it — then you can too.

 

Sharing over at Kelly’s