Wednesday 5 December 2012

Marriage… It’s spiritual…

 

So Simon and I are finally married!

S&R reception background

Man, it took a lot to get there but we finally made it and what a great day we had an what an AMAZING honeymoon we had in Hawaii! Thank you so much to all that contributed to our day and financially to our honeymoon! We did send a few postcards but only to about a third of the people we were planning so far… We will get there eventually…

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As Simon and I now prepare to finish up our work together and move to the ‘top end’ of Australia we are certainly bounding feet first into ‘married life’. Already I feel that it’s been really important that we are grounded spiritually as individuals and as a couple and that we continue to work on that.

As part of our engagement process we had marriage prep classes with the very fun (and wise and experienced Winking smile) Jason and Michelle Davies-Kildea.

J&M S&R

We officially did the Prepare course (the website’s nothing fancy). For those of you that might not know this is basically a short course that most Christian churches use (and I believe some non-Christian celebrants) to make sure you know your partner and yourself. You know, before legally signing on the dotted line that you will devote your lives to each other… There is an online quiz about yourself, your upbringing, your opinions on your relationship with your partner and your expectations for marriage. You do it separately and then it electronically collates your answers, compares them and gives you a score which basically tells you how different or the same your answers were in different areas. The lower the score the more different your responses.

Some people may say that it is determining your compatibility in certain areas, I would say it compares your likeness in certain areas.

Now, let me just put it out there… Simon and I are quite different people… Not opposite exactly but not necessarily alike…

It is not uncommon for us if we are going for a trip to Melbourne to look at ourselves and laugh. Generally I am wearing almost all black (not in a goth way in a, hopefully, sleek way Winking smile) and Simon is in all bright colours. This is starting to change however.

I love continuous learning. My idea of the perfect year would be to be able to afford to just study, not to have to work, just read and learn and write assignments, get feedback and start again. This is Simon’s worst nightmare, to the point of anxiety at the thought, he’s better with his hands…

And I like things (outwardly) to look clean and tidy. I like to do the dishes as soon as possible after dinner just because I think they look ugly sitting on the bench and this is our dressing table at the moment…

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Simon’s side is on the left, my side is on the right…

We’re different, and we know this. It’s part of why we fell in love with each other. So it was no surprise when our results came back and we found a lot of differences in our responses. A big one was in communication, particularly in regards to conflict. Simon will tend to retreat in the face of conflict to the point of shutting down and I will want to talk and talk and talk it out, no matter how painful, no matter how loud the conversation becomes. I hear this is not an uncommon pattern between husbands and wives…

Anyway, for one section we got 0%. It was for Living Styles. Can I draw your attention to our dressing table above again…

No surprises there.

What we weren’t expecting was to get 100% in a section! (Jason actually said he had both never seen a 0% or a 100% so I actually felt like we are a pretty unique couple) We got 100% on Spiritual Compatability.

Wow!

Thank you Jesus!

Do you ever forget what you pray for until your prayers get answered?

I can’t tell you how long I have waited (prayerfully and sometimes even in the midst of other relationships) for a relationship that doesn’t just have physical and emotional compatibility but Spiritual compatibility. And God is faithful.

My 2012 Inspiration word has been ‘covenant’ as I discussed in this post.

If our marriage is to truly be a covenant, a solemn, spiritual agreement between myself, Simon and God then we need to be intentional about giving our marriage to God for his service. In order for this to happen we need to be spiritually prepared. And as I mentioned this preparation needed to happen both as individuals and as a couple.

Despite all of the beautiful plans I was fussing over; the plans over beautiful details, the plans to make me outwardly ‘look’ the best version of me possible; the most important plans were the ones that grounded myself and Simon as spiritually strong as possible.

Our marriage should be a demonstration of the Holy Spirit between us. Well not even should… We desire it to be…

But this is a tough call, I can’t even honestly begin to pretend it isn’t. Already I have not wanted to demonstrate holiness to my husband (even in a very public way) SmileAnd it hasn’t even been a month yet!

So to continue to do this long after the honeymoon is over, long after we have children and lose many hours of sleep, long after we are old and grey and tired… This is going to be tough. Therefore the only choice we have is to focus on God as the centre of our relationship.

This is easier said than done, let’s see how it goes, but I’m glad we had that engagement period of 18 months for spiritual preparation.

S&R Cake cutting

Happy Day!*** Smile

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