"I doooooo!”
September 8, 2018, was indeed a day of new beginnings. Christopher and I excitedly stood at the
altar, looking each other deeply in the eyes as we said our vows. We smiled, laughed and whispered things no
one else could hear but us. “Christopher, you may now salute your bride!” My husband beamed with joy as he pulled me
into a loving embrace and kissed me. It
was our first intimate kiss, one reserved for the day we became husband and
wife. Until that day, we only hugged and
kissed each other on the cheek. “Ladies
and gentlemen, it’s my honor to present to you
Mr. and Mrs. Christopher DeBose,
Sr.” We held hands securely, continued our infectious smiling and proceeded out
of our church. We were now two people headed
into our lives as one.
Prior to marrying Christopher, I was single for two
decades. I invested valuable time preparing
my heart to become a wife. I did my absolute best to rid myself of all
unrealistic expectations I built up in my mind over the years. I’ve been married for nine months, and
friends, I quickly learned that I still
had unrealistic expectations. Granted, there
are things that should happen in every marriage such as honor, trust,
commitment, love, communication, agreement and working together. But what happens when your husband doesn’t
communicate the same way you do or has a different style of conveying his love
to you? Or, what happens when he’s used to going to the car wash every Saturday
morning but you now expect him to have
coffee with you every Saturday morning? I’ll tell you what happens. You have a funeral for your expectations
because they are now dead!
God is always “doing a new thing,” whether we
recognize it or not. When I said “I do”
to my husband, that was the beginning our new life together. It did not become a life of what I want and
expect verses what he wants and expects.
It became a life of building together
and building together can sometimes lead to frustration. My pastor puts it this way: frustration is
the difference between reality and expectations. If this was a math equation it would look
like this:
Expectations – reality = frustration
As a new wife, I had to let my expectations die and
stay dead. Most times, these
expectations are ones we never give a voice to.
We hold them in our minds and automatically expect our spouse to meet
them. When our spouse doesn’t meet them,
we get angry, pout or display some other immature emotion. Meanwhile, our spouse is looking at us like
“What are you upset about? I don’t know what I did?” Let me give you a real life example. Because
of my husband’s work schedule, we sometimes go days without seeing one another
face to face. When he’s off, in my mind, I expected him
to find something for us to do and spend time with me since he hasn’t seen me
in days. In his mind, since he’s worked
twelve hour shifts five days in a row, he’s looking forward to resting. He’s
not thinking about doing anything other than that! I never said anything to him about my desires
because I expected him to know what
to do. WRONG! This led to frustration on
my part, with my husband looking at me very perplexed because he really didn’t
know what was bothering me. (Wives, our husbands are not mind readers so stop
playing mind games.) If you find yourself becoming frustrated with your
spouse check your expectation level. He
may have tried to tell you over and over that he’s not good at something. Don’t force him. Love him and focus on the things he is great
at. I no longer expect my husband to be anybody other than God created him to
be. Love does not insist on its own way. (1 Corinthians 13:5)
Friends, married life is a brand new life and a life
of oneness. Becoming one is a process. Do
not allow the enemy to disrupt the process of becoming one!
Copyright 2019
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