Recently I have realized how big my mouth is.
Marriage seems to do that to you. It brings out your best. Just look at my husband.
Every morning he wakes up with me each time I hit the snooze button. The last time (usually the third time), being the one I know I must get up, he turns over to look at me as we slowly wake up together while muttering nonsense words and encouragement as we pry our eyes awake. It’s something I deeply cherish in my heart. Once I get up, he follows soon after to make us coffee. Some of the most amazing coffee my tongue as ever tasted. No joke. A few special mornings, he gets out my cereal for me. Normally with a big spoon, which he does for laughs.
Now, some girls might point out that true love would make me a full breakfast, complete with bacon and pancakes and I can only laugh. You see, my husband and I aren’t morning people. At all. Therefore, the simple fact that he makes me coffee, is enough for my heart to explode with gratitude especially since he doesn’t have to get up. Like I said, marriage can bring out the best in people.
However marriage can also bring out the worst. Enter: me.
I don’t think of myself as a nagger. I don’t echo several statements in an extremely high pitched voice that raises several pitches with each statement. However, I guiltily admit, my mouth is bigger than my heart somedays. Even right after the most handsome man I have seen with bed head hair pours me coffee.
Today my husband had a job interview and I inquired what he was wearing. I asked him a few times if he was dressing up (what can I say, he looks AMAZING in a tie), if he was going to wear his fancy pants, I even wondered out loud (oops) what the staff at this place of employment wore.
I didn’t tell him what to wear exactly, but the questions could be read like that. I think my heart was in the right place, wanting them to think as highly of him as I do, but the desire to control was where my deed took a wrong turn.
As I sipped my coffee I had no idea what damage I did… but driving to work it hit me. God reminded me of something so simple, yet, so wrenched in conviction that I had to turn off my morning tunes to ponder it for over ten minutes. If I (try to) mother (nag, manipulate, control) my husband, I take away God’s chance to Father him.
Let me repeat that.
If I mother my husband, I take away God’s chance to Father him.
You see I have this need for control. I have these expectations of how things should be, even if they are so blatantly not like that at all. If marriage has taught me one thing so far in these three months since we said I Do (did I mention we’re baby newly weds?) it’s not that I need to pray for my husband or for our situation to change, it’s for me to change. For my heart to do the U-tern and reassess the chatter in my head or the circumstance screaming at us from all sides.
I really need to get over this selfish agenda of mine and get on with the agenda of my king. I need to be more about loving than I am about wondering if my husband is going to wear a tie. I need to be more content with dirty pairs of shoes surrounding me on the couch because that means I am blessed with a breathing, loving, husband who feels at home in our apartment. Home enough to trust me with his secrets as he quickly takes off his shoes to come snuggle with me, sharing me about his day, about his interview. The physical dirty shoes fade away as I step into the metaphoric ones of his life.
I’m not perfect. Nor will I ever will be.
But if I start looking at things from my God’s perspective instead of mine… I get a tiny little bit closer and learn to love my husband a tiny little bit deeper.
