Wedding anniversary thoughts

Yesterday marked eight years of marriage for Tracy and me.

Boy, has this turned out nothing like I thought it would!

When I was a teenager and twenty-something, I had a picture of what my wife would be. I had a script for how marriage would be.

The gift of eight years of real marriage to a real woman is this: I can clearly see that my illusions of marriage and a marriage partner were selfish. They were all about me. More specifically, they were all about how awesome I would be as a husband and how grateful and lucky my wife would feel to be with me.

I gave myself to a real marriage with a real woman and it revealed things about me that my twenty-something self worked so hard to deny or excuse.

It turns out, I’m not so great after all. Back when I wanted to get married, I wanted to get married for me. Then I got married and I found out that marriage is not for me; it’s for her. Once the marriage got started, I found out how awfully ill-equipped, naive, and unprepared I was (and still am).

Marriage is a gift because when we find out we’re not so great after all, we have someone who loves us despite our shortcomings. We have someone who will stay with us as we try and fail and try again…and fail again. We get to give the same grace and love to our partners who are going through the same personal maturation and metamorphosis.

Romance was a lot easier eight years ago. Sex was more frequent. But I hardly recognize who I was then and I don’t want to be that guy again. My wife doesn’t want me to be that guy again either.

I couldn’t have predicted eight years ago who we would be today and where we would end up. But it’s better than I could have predicted.

I anticipate more goodness than I can imagine as we grow together with God over the next eight years.

Thank you for being patient and sticking with me, Tracy. I love you.