Here is an excerpt used for an opening honest conversation:

“She’s a poetry book.
You must read every letter,
and digest every word.
Every part of her paints
a part of a bigger picture.
You can’t love her,
if you do not intend on
reading every page
and learning how to
comprehend every piece of her.”
― Pierre Alex Jeanty,
Book “HER”

What a way to set off a conversation — using a poem to describe us women.  Where men are literal and women are like that poem. There are three main kinds of poetry: narrative, dramatic and lyrical.  Can this describe us as women? Bottom line is that we can see that BOTH men and women have many layers and pages that we have to read through carefully and with love.

What does love look like in a marriage?  Truly understanding each other, supporting and loving unconditionally.  We walk at a common pace.  We don’t just “fall in love“, we grow in love, we are rooted in love.  We look for opportunities where we can compromise and get on the same page.

To get on the same page, we have to be willing to read every page.  Understand a person’s background, upbringing, seasons of life.  It is a different person dating that we are taking more notice of.  We can’t always use the same strategy.  We learn to love through loudness.  

We don’t stay stuck to routine, when we know that opposites do attract.  We never stop learning about each other.  We get to know more about the person when we live with them day in and day out.  Some times it can be simple and other times it can get very complicated –that is what relationship is about.  Giving 100/100 not a concept of 50/50.  

What if their 100 is your 50?  Be willing to go the extra mile — be willing even if they are not willing.  Learn how to listen.  Learn how to SEE each other.  Sometimes there can be those walls where you never shared that with anyone or that you haven’t been able to but in marriage –there goes the platform for all of that growth and experimentation.  We learn a lot through seasons, pain, loss, trials, triumphs, tragedies and more.  We have to know when to be vulnerable and lean into the emotion to express what we are going through.  That’s okay!

What’s the worst that could happen really when we share?  Be willing to have those “healthy hiccups” in those honest conversations that take you to another level. 

There is a radical acceptance, a fear sometimes that we wont be able to manage those emotions.  What do you do when you are in that dark place –that dark moment where an experience provoked you to have to make that radical decision. Guards go up and the moment we feel like there is an issue we quit at the task at hand. 

We can become jaded off of past relationships –that is something we must hash out and deal with separately and internally.  “When you marry Goliath!”  Change the perspective because the marriage relationship is not the place where should just be a basis of yielding a return.  There will be moments where you will have to give more and then more and then the most!  

Are there unrealistic expectations that we have had –did we expect to be coddled?  We have to grow into that place of maturity and growing HURTS! Like a midget it is stated that because of their size they experience actual deep pain in their body when they grow.

What did you envision walking into this relationship?  There can be a disconnect.  There can be tantrums not age appropriate that we respond with.  There can be fights and battles that were so unnecessary.  We need to grow into being an adult and actually take that time to invest in SELF so that we can be better to those that God has placed for us to have these unions.  

Let’s move past all this and get better at being BETTER for the One that assigned us our one.  

Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church—for we are members of his body. “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.”
Ephesians 5:21-31 NIV

New for JUNE, many thanks to the contributors on the pilot — Couples Connect… so stay tuned for more. 

With Love,

Christina