nothing hidden

I'm becoming more and more grateful for people like John & Angela Mueller who are willing to bare their lives in order to better prepare Ryan and myself for marriage. We had another counseling session last night, and it's just so good to have someone tell you point-blank specific things that will inevitably cause struggle and difficulty in marriage, but to look you in the eyes and give Godly encouragement and wisdom for those times as well. We talked about submission and leadership last night, along with needs, roles, etc., within the marriage. As I mentioned in my last post, it's so refreshing to go through this ahead of time and to see the weight of the commitment we're making now rather than wondering what in the world happened later.

a heavy heart

It's been crazy the last week or two learning what goes into readying oneself for marriage, or rather, a couple readying itself for marriage. As we've delved head-first into pre-marital counseling materials, we've learned a lot about ourselves and about what we're getting ourselves into. The best thing, though, is realizing that it's God Who is getting us into it - it's not about us or for us really. It's about Him. Realizing that is easy. It's living it out that gets hard.

So many things that we thought we had worked out already...like how we do the laundry, who manages the budget, how we handle birth control, where we spend holidays...suddenly aren't as easy because it's not just about what works well for us, but what God has called us to. We haven't found that there is any big problem with that either between us as a couple or between us and the Lord, but there's still a new level of thought that has to be involved in every decision. And it just so happens that all of that thinking can make a man and a woman tired and cranky. It's a challenge, but I'm so very grateful that we're dealing with it now rather than going into marriage thinking it's going to be a piece of cake (although there will be cake, and lots of it, involved in the first day of our marriage).

We haven't written our vows yet, but we've been talking about them. They seem to become weightier each day, and I mean that in a good way. I can't imagine standing before God and declaring these vows that mean almost nothing to me because I don't understand them. Just as I'm daily learning more and more about what my covenant with Christ means, I want to daily grow in my knowledge of what my covenant with Ryan means. It gives the term a "heavy heart" a whole new meaning, and I love it.