As this beautiful year has been wrapping up and I look back
on all I have to be grateful for, I was thinking about a wonderful blessing my
mother-in-law bestowed upon me before I got married. It was something someone
had blessed her with before she got married, and it’s something I think of
often.
The blessing is this: May your wedding day be the day you
love each other the least.
When I first heard it, I was a little surprised. It sounded
odd. Are we not supposed to love each other that much on our wedding day? Au
contraire: You should love each other more than you ever thought was possible
to love another person. However, your wedding day is not the top of the curve
and then your love goes downhill. Your wedding is the starting point to your
new life, not the finish line. That love should grow exponentially every day.
My mother-in-law’s blessing has rung loud and true. Jake and
I are coming up on our 3-year wedding anniversary next month. Although I loved
him more than I thought possible on our wedding day, it’s nothing compared to
the love I feel for him now. It’s a different kind of love. It’s a love that
makes you grow. You get to grow together now. You have someone to share
yourself with who shares himself with you. It’s a love that pulls you through
thick and thin in the best and worst of times. It’s a love that both challenges
you and makes life easier. It’s a love that makes life far more beautiful than
you thought or knew was possible.
When I was younger, my mother told me that marriage would
either be the best thing or the worst thing I would ever do. For me, it has
been the best thing. I can’t imagine what it would be like if I had married the
wrong person. If I had (like if I had married any number of the boys I’d had
crushes on growing up), it would be the worst decision I’d ever made.
Tonight I was thinking about the part of marriage that
challenges you: the part that makes you a better person. It makes you give of
yourself completely and totally unselfishly. Sometimes, that even means saying
something that’s hard. It can mean saying something your spouse doesn’t
necessarily want to but needs to hear. It’s the tough love you don’t necessarily
like to give, but if you truly love the person who needs it, there’s no other
choice but to meet the need.
These moments don’t always happen often, but you say it
because you love the other person. You want the best for him and so you say it
with love and because you know the good he’s capable of and needs to live up to
in order to be his true self.
Actually, although they can be hard, my husband and I love
these moments. Because it’s said with love and not dripping with sarcasm,
guilt, or an eventual IOU (or “you owe me”), it’s a safe place to talk about
things that are more challenging. The “This is bothering me” or the “I know
your best, but this wasn’t it” conversations. Why? Because sometimes you have
to love each other enough to hurt the other person’s feelings. It’s certainly
not that you need to hurt their
feelings. Having your feelings hurt is a choice you make. I talked a many
months ago about the importance of humility. That’s why.
I also don’t mean to hurt your spouse’s feelings on purpose.
That’s just mean if that’s your motive. Your motive is (or should be) always to
strengthen and help the other person be his best self.
I’m so grateful for this part of marriage. It’s what makes
me continue to grow and lets me know how much my husband loves me (more than I
could possibly express in words), and how much I love him.
With that said, the romance aspect that you dream of and
take a huge part in on your wedding day should also always be intact. It’s what
makes this relationship different from any you’ve ever had. It’s why monogamy
is so important and why we only share marriage with one person.
I’m so grateful for the romance side of marriage, too. Plus,
the smallest things can become huge romantic gestures. Like taking care of each
other when you don’t feel well, or vacuuming the house just because, making
meals for each other or planning one together.
And then there’s the really big ones: weekends away, travel,
carefully planned anniversaries, roses on Valentine’s day, real diamond
earrings on big anniversaries, etc.
I think often people are only thinking of the last category
with love and marriage instead of all of it. Marriage is more about being with
and loving your best friend each and every day and growing in that love
together. If you’re doing it right, it does grow every day.
To my mother-in-law, you were most certainly right. AND…to
everyone who just recently got or is just about to get married, I wish you the
same blessing. May your wedding day be the day you love each other the least.
Believe me, when you get to the day and realize how much
love is packed and filled into that one day, to have it grow exponentially
everyday after is a pretty remarkable and extremely underrated aspect.
Happy weddings, love birds. Oh, and happy last few days of
2014. See you in the new year!
This is Lauren...over and out.
