Change always comes bearing gifts. (Price Pritchett)
New job. New house. New baby. New clothes, new hair cut, new schedule. Different city, different responsibilities, different lifestyle, different habits.
Change is often something good, anticipated, longed-for, but it’s still difficult because, for a while, nothing is familiar. And we feel lost without familiar surroundings.
That Lost Feeling
I remember that same lost feeling for the first few months of marriage, maybe even the whole first year.
I was knocked-out in love with my husband (I still am) and I knew I wanted nothing else but to be with him. But it wasn’t easy because it was all so different. No parents. No familiar routine. No Mom to run errands with. No old friends to call up for shopping or coffee. Everything was new and different, and because of that, it was difficult to accept.
All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another.
(Anatole France)
Different, Not Bad
Everything changed with one morning’s strange epiphany during that first year. Joe was doing something – I don’t even remember what – but it was different than what I was used to. I was just watching him, feeling that tightening, the offense at what was unfamiliar, when it came: the fact that it was different didn’t make it wrong. It just made it different, and I could get used to different.
I Can Get Used to Different
That moment was the first in many steps upward, back to the comfortable glow of familiarity. When I reached that threshold of being comfortable in my new life, it wasn’t because I had finally managed to make it the same as my old life. It was because I had accepted a new set of circumstances and behaviors and routines and surroundings as my own.
I had put aside the prejudice against the unknown, allowed it to come close enough to me to become known, and had accepted it as something equally good to what I had before. In many ways, something much, much better.
The One That Stuck
I could have shortened that process had I learned a little something about the strange and wonderful gift of flexibility, and how it helps us accept change, before getting married. I think it was shorter than it might have been because I had been watching, a long time, and making those resolutions that single people love to make before marriage.
A lot of them disappeared once I actually experienced marriage, but one stuck. Over and over I had seen my friends and family expend all their energy on changing their spouses. It seemed so obvious to me, the single and objective onlooker: you can’t change somebody else, and you just frustrate each other when you try.
Create a New Right
I didn’t understand the powerful motivation of wanting to accomplish that change until I entered marriage. It’s not as simple and petty as I thought, not necessarily a power struggle, though it often turns into that.
Mostly we start trying to change each other because we are trying to create a life that feels right. We have strong ideas about what right is. It takes a hefty bucketful of humility dumped on your head before you realize that sometimes “right” is merely a matter of preference, and fighting to the death over preference is just stupid. Create a new right, together, and you’ll both be happier.
Get Limber
That’s where flexibility comes in. It’s letting go of comfort long enough to get close to the unfamiliar. It’s letting go of assumptions long enough to see that the unfamiliar isn’t so bad. It’s letting go of control long enough to let someone else’s preferences be just as important as yours. It’s a difficult thing to be.
But we need to learn how to be flexible.
Some days we wake up and don’t feel comfortable with ourselves. Some days the whole world feels foreign. Some days the ability to go with the flow is the only thing we’ve got going.
So let’s go with it.
5-Minute Marriage Check
If you don’t like something change it; if you can’t change it, change the way you think about it.
(Mary Engelbreit)
Flexibility may not be our natural strength, but it’s a great trait because it allows us to see change in a new way. Change isn’t just something that happens, out of our control. Change is also a tool.
How many times do we do things the same old way, walk in the same old ruts, without stopping to think about our ability to change?
They must often change, who would be constant in happiness or wisdom.
(Confucius)
Give yourself permission to change. Give yourself permission to try a new way of doing things. Sometimes the old ways work for a time, and then there time is up.
What is one area in your life that isn’t working any more? Are you trying to fit it into an old way that just doesn’t apply to your life anymore?
Try flexibility. Do something in a new way today.
5-Minute Action Point
After you’ve done a thing the same way for two years, look it over carefully. After five years, look at it with suspicion. And after ten years, throw it away and start all over.
(Alfred Edward Perlman, New York Times, 3 July 1958)
You know how fresh a room looks after you put up new curtains, or bring in fresh flowers, or just rearrange the same old furniture?
Our lives need that refreshment, too.
Think of one area in your marriage that feels stuck: maybe it’s the way you communicate, or a same-old conflict, or a stale sex life, or boring date night (or no dates in too long)… There’s always something that could use some freshening up.
What can you do different to refresh that area of your marriage? Think of one thing now and do it today.
Image by
alicepopkorn.
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This post is {day 15} of the Build a Better Marriage Challenge.
It’s a 30-day challenge to be deliberate about building a better marriage. We’ll talk about some of the common obstacles to a better marriage (marriage killers) and some of the important habits for a successful marriage (marriage keys). We’ll also work through some of the misconceptions that affect our marriage, faulty thinking we’ve picked up from our culture, our pasts, and maybe even from the church. Each day’s reading will end with a 5-minute marrige check and a 5-minute action point, so you can take it on home.
Join in via the Mr Linky on the challenge page. You can also just read along, but remember that all challenge participants will receive a free copy of the ebook at the end of the challenge.
Here’s to better, stronger, happier marriages!
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