After Four Months..."I do???"

My wife and I have now been married for about 4 months.  Now that I have this marriage thing all figured out and the lengthy experience to go with it, I thought I would share with the world my vast knowledge.  I feel that since everything has gone perfectly since we got married that you should hear the truth from me.  Everything has gone perfect.  Nothing has surprised us.  Nothing has been hard.  Everything is bliss. You should be picking up on the sarcasm by now.

Alright, maybe things have not been entirely peachy the past 4 months but I would not trade one single day, one single fight, one single skiing lesson for anything in the world!  We are joined together as one in covenant relationship with God.  While its not always pretty, it is a beautiful thing.  It is amazing to look and see how much closer we've grown in 4 months and how much more we love each other.  I want to share a little about what I've learned and what I wish I would have known prior to marriage.


Great advice that I was given...
I was advised by a man that I work with, whom I greatly admire and have an immense amount of respect for, to talk about expectations.  Discuss expectations about your marriage before you get into situations where you are expecting different things.  This is great advice and is something that we did with great success beforehand.  We talked about the following areas of expectations (usually via email):  wedding night, honeymoon, first Christmas plans, budget, TV/internet, fighting, quality time, and spiritual leadership.  During these conversations we would both give what we expected and then find the middle ground.  It is very painless and super beneficial.

One of the most valuable things that someone preparing to enter into marriage can learn is that marriage is both people working together to die to themselves.  Someone told me that if they could sum up marriage in one word it would be "Die-to-self."  I thought the hyphens were cheating but I let it slide.  He explained that when both spouses work at dying to their own desires and living in loving service to one another they can find marriage happiness relatively easily.  We now find this to be true in our marriage.  When we take our eyes off of serving one another we feel it and it hurts.


Great advice I should have been given...
Do not, under any circumstances, try to teach your spouse anything on your honeymoon!  This will lead to arguing, fighting, slapping and ultimately death by ski pole.  We learned this one the hard way.  My wife and I decided to go skiing.  I am a self-proclaimed expert and she had never been.  We left the mountain bruised, frustrated, and blind-sided about what had just happened...but still married.

People love to give you fun gifts at wedding showers.  They don't want to be "those people" who give you something boring and practical.  My wife and I have now decided to always be "those people."  After a long day of travel and moving in nothing feels better than a warm shower.  However, no one decided to give us the practical gift of a shower curtain liner...I was left with 3 choices.  One, go to Wal-Mart at 1 a.m..  Two, construct a makeshift "shower wall" with the 14 food processors we were given.  Or three, go to bed dirty on brand new sheets.  None of which sound appealing at 1 a.m..

Recommended Reads...
There is a lot of great marriage literature out there from very wise people.  Some of the books that we read were Sacred Marriage, The Act of Marriage, and The 5 Love Languages.

Sacred Marriage by Gary Thomas is a great book that says marriage exists to make you holy, not happy.  We see what Thomas means in our marriage as our sin becomes evident and it hurts one another.  The Act of Marriage by Tim and Beverly LaHaye is a great book for Christians on sex.  It gives great physical information as well as setting couples up for an idea of what it looks like to have a God-glorifying sex life.  The 5 Love Languages by Gary Chapman discusses how people give and receive love differently.  It is vital to know how to "love" your spouse entering marriage.

Final Thoughts and a Question...
Marriage has been so much fun and it has been great and continues to get better.  It is work.  It is hard.  It is important to always be intentional.  Always "fall forward."  Serve one another in love.  Submit to him lovingly.  Love her as Christ loved the church.  It is beautiful.  We have a long way to go.

It has been hard for me to learn how to spiritually lead my wife.  It is hard to transform into being the spiritual leader of a family.  What are some things that you or others do that helps you?