Showing posts with label Adjustments. Show all posts

The Feeling of Loss in Your Adjustment Period

I'm going to post below an article from Focus on the Family, which I find very helpful to newly married women. But first, let me give my piece on this. I often tell young women who come for premarital counseling that once you have tied the knot, you have to say farewell to singlehood. One just can't keep thinking single anymore. You have to start seeing yourself as an essential part of your spouse now. The process of transition from single life to married mode is not easy, but I never found the right word to describe it until I read this article --- L O S S.

It does feel like you lost something because you can't be independent any longer, and you can't just do anything you want anytime you want it anymore. However, it is a good kind of loss because you gain so much more. If you are a believer of Christ, you should already know that feeling because it is similar to when you gave your life to Jesus. One must love Jesus above all other loves and even love for self. You must lose yourself in order to GAIN Christ.

Some ladies might easily argue that they don't mind losing themselves if they gain someone perfect like Christ. But husbands are not perfect, so the ultimate question would be, is the loss all worth it? It's amazing how, when you dare to lose a part of yourself, a profound sense of fulfillment begins to surface in your marriage despite your and your husband’s imperfections. It is a mystery to be able to experience perfect joy and contentment despite your flaws and that of your husband’s. Of course, it does not happen overnight. Consistency is a must and when completion of "loss" has been achieved, you will be surprised at the results. Following His prescribed process opens up the doors of your marriage for heaven to flow in. And what is that prescribed process? Lose in order to gain. Selfless giving and service. Putting your spouse above yourself.

Remember that passage in the gospel of John, where Jesus tells them that on His own He can do nothing? Did you think twice about that line? Isn't Jesus part of the Triune God? And isn't He as God as the Father is? Yet, I believe that He stated so clearly His choice to be INTERDEPENDENT with the Father, although He Himself had the same abilities as Abba had. He chose not to be independent of the Father in every way --- "I only do what I see My Father do. I only say what I hear My Father say."

Wives, we, in essence and in so many ways in our family, in our career decisions, in our hobbies, in our interests, CAN actually do without our husbands. But we must be like Jesus, who makes that choice to be interdependent, not independent.

Is it all worth it? Oh yes, it is. The process may not be easy every step of the way. But remember, it's just a process leading to a destination. The latter brings in rewards that make you forget all the 'hell' you went through to get there.

Here's the article I wish to share with you. Be blessed as you take heed!
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Feelings of Doubt and Uncertainty

The adjustment from being single to being married can create feelings of loss and anxiety. Here's how to cope.

by Mitch Temple

Next Article in Series:

The sudden change that comes after the honeymoon can be one of life's most sobering moments. Some young couples describe this as "being hit in the face with a cold glass of water" or "being struck by lightning."

Others express it this way:

"I feel like I'm on another planet, and I want to go home!"

"I miss being able to do what I want to do, when I want to do it."

And here's a favorite that marriage therapists hear often: "If two becoming one means that I disappear as a person, forget it!"

If you feel like this, don't think you're alone or that your situation is hopeless. The following quotations illustrate the fact that the adjustment period from aloneness to togetherness is often complex:

I figure that the degree of difficulty in combining two lives ranks somewhere between rerouting a hurricane and finding a parking place in downtown Manhattan.—Claire Cloninger

I love being married. It's so great to find that one special person you want to annoy for the rest of your life.—Rita Rudner

Many couples wonder how the blending of two personalities and sets of ambitions, desires, and dreams could ever be expected by a wise and all-knowing God! Trying to adjust from "freedom" to partnership can be difficult and exasperating — but it's a process, not just a destination.

The Feelings are Normal

When we shift from being single to being married, we experience loss. Losing something leaves us feeling sad. But as we grow in our relationship with the person we committed to, the grief can turn to joy and contentment.

It's common for young couples to experience various levels of "buyer's remorse." That was the case with Nicole and Ted. Nicole had waited for many years to find the right man to spend the rest of her life with. At age 33, she met Ted. Within 13 months they were married in her hometown of Atlanta.

Though she was certain Ted was the man God had chosen for her, Nicole missed her independence. Often she felt sad, conflicted, confused — wondering whether she'd made the wrong decision about marriage. She loved Ted and was thankful for him, realizing she couldn't have asked for a better man. But she struggled with having to give up her "alone time" and sense of freedom. After praying, studying the Bible, and getting direction from Christian friends, Nicole began to see that her feelings were normal and that most people experience them. She accepted the responsibility of honoring the relationship God had given her with Ted. Each day she made conscious efforts to enjoy her relationship with her new husband in the fullest sense.

Though she occasionally needed time alone, Nicole learned to think in terms of two instead of one. When tempted to do her own thing at Ted's expense, she resisted. When it would have been easy to plop down on the couch after a hard day's work, she spent time with her husband first. Ted responded in a similar way, and their marriage developed into a bond filled with joy and intimacy.

That's how closeness and biblical oneness develop in marriages in spite of selfish tendencies. Though challenging and often confusing, the transition from independence to interdependence is absolutely vital to your union.

Finding Your Fountain Of Life: Part 2 of The Wife's Renewing of the Mind

I was once asked recently: "Would you rather give or receive?" This question was directed at a specific aspect in my married life. However, it could go for all aspects of marriage. Would I rather be at the giving or receiving end?

Were I to be asked that same question on the first year of my married life, my answer would have been different from what I gave that night.

Early on in our marriage, I often fought my way to the receiving end. I thought that being there would bring our relationship to a peak of satisfaction which I felt was lacking at that time. Hollywood has never failed to project that kind of expectation from the woman in a state of marriage. The husband works hard to buy his wife the most expensive jewelry. He surprises her with his gift and the scene shows the woman all teary-eyed, screaming in glee and feeling like a princess. He wakes up earlier than her and makes coffee for her, prepares the breakfast, while the wife simply comes up from behind and wraps her arms around him, gives him a morning sweet kiss. Or at work, the woman coming from a restroom break suddenly finds a dozen of long-stemmed roses on her desk and guess where it came from --- of course, from her devoted husband. Seldom do we see films that portray the woman in the backstage while the spotlight is on the husband. I'm sure there are more but on a quick recall, I can only count one --- Remember the Titans, starring Denzel Washington. Though his wife was a homemaker and was seldom seen at practices, she played a great role from the backstage. It was her hidden acts of courage and strength, of silence in a time of much pressure that kept the spotlight shining on her man.

I have had to renew my mind about this. I admit the way was not easy. Sometimes, you keep giving but never receiving from your spouse. How do you give when you yourself are found drained and empty and simply unable to give more? I wish I believed the secret early on, but I did not. Eventually, I gave it a try. You see, my friend, we've been lied to. Our husband is not our fountain of life. He is as needy as we are. He may not display his needs the way we do, may not express it the way we do. Nevertheless, the reality of his dire need for LIFE is as real as ours is. How then can we expect someone so needy to fill our own needs? That would look like me so hungry and expecting the street kid who's begging for food to feed my hunger.

When I was single, I saw God as my Husband. I got that from Isaiah 54:5, "For the Maker is your husband, the Lord of hosts is His name..." I remember back in college, when I had to go out on Sundays alone, enjoying my Burger King or Kenny Rogers dinner alone, while at the other booths, couples or families would be laughing around enjoying their meal together. I remember feeling a slight of pity for myself being alone, and then reminding myself of this verse. I sought much comfort from this truth. I found my satisfaction in that promise. After dinner, I would stand in line for a jeepney ride going back to the campus and stand alone while everyone beside me were in the arms of their lover. I would rehearse the verse over and over in my mind, sang it in a low voice when I found an empty space in the front seat of the jeep. It kept the tears at bay. It kept my aching heart from drowning in self-pity. I would feel like crying and laughing at the same time because the more I rehearsed this truth in my heart, the more I felt His tangible presence. I felt His arms wrapped around me in my loneliness and then I just knew...I was not alone at all.

Then I got married, and I thought I'd drop the verse. After all, now I got a real husband. Sadly, I too made him to be like God. I began to see my husband as my maker --- the maker of my happiness, the maker of my satisfaction, the maker of fun times, the maker of romance --- all of which he can never be. There is only ONE MAKER in our life and His name is The Lord of Hosts. That is what Isaiah proclaimed. It did not occur to me that I was falling into idolatry. I began to put my husband on a position that was solely reserved for God in my life. Of course, I was always bound for disappointment. Disappointment created more frustrations. Frustrations bred more discontentment, and discontentment fueled my endless nagging.

Young women, you do not cease to make Jesus your Fountain of Life even when you said your I do's to a man. Ultimately, God has to remain our primary husband, our Maker, our source of life. And when we do, we will find ourselves able to give more to our spouses. When our wells run dry, we do not demand from our husband to fill it with water, we go to our Fountain that flows with Living Water. What is beautiful with Living Water is that those who drink of it will never thirst again. What is even more splendid about this water is that as we give it out from the well of our hearts, we too get filled even more! Call it magical, it may be, because this world's "life" has no capacity to increase itself as it is given out. When it comes out from you, it leaves you drained. You make people happy with worldly measures and it will leave you empty and dried-up. You give people this Living Water, and you will find yourself filled with more of it!

Time and time again this secret has proven itself true. It is simply divine and remains to be a mystery to me. Not many partake of it because the only way to dip into the fountain of life is by bending yourself into a low position. Pride can produce counterfeit life, but humility opens up the wells of living waters in your heart.

Ladies, look to Jesus, your Maker, your Husband. Only then will you be able to remain standing on the giving end all the time. And guess what. The longer you stand on the giving end, the more you find yourself on the receiving end.

"Give and it shall be given to you; good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over will be put into your bosom. For with the same measure that you use, it will be measured back to you." Luke 6:38

The Renewing of the Wife's Mind Part 1

Wives, what is your idea of beauty? What is your idea of love and marriage? These are questions that we ought not to ignore in the first years of our married life. I would advise the newlywed woman, or the single-almost-getting-married lady to take a real time off for herself and sit by a coffee table perhaps, write down these questions, and seriously attempt to answer them from the heart. Your answers to these questions will, after all, most likely determine how you will carry on your relationship with your husband.

I grew up as a teenager with two major vices --- a public and a private one. The former was romance novels, and the latter was pornography. What a combination. One fed the other well alright. I went on with these vices for years and needless to say they were my addictions. Of course, my mind began to be filled with all these false and perverted notions about love, romance and beauty. Without me knowing it, my perception of marriage was so distorted that it was way too far from its authentic attributes authored by its Creator.

Although I had stopped reading the romance novels by the time I got engaged, and had already been delivered from pornography a couple of years before that, my mind had not yet been renewed. Because of these ungodly ideas embedded so deeply in my psyche, a lot of disappointments, dissatisfaction, and false expectations built up within me in the first three years of married life. Of course, it did not help that I too had to go through major inner healing from issues of rejection.

Thank God for His Word, and thank God for mothers who speak with so much wisdom!

Ladies, romance novels are just that --- novels. They are works of fiction, and seldom do stories as such make their way into the biography or autobiography section. I say seldom because there are a few exceptions. The problem with us women who get so caught up with these novels is that we begin to fancy our own real-life marriages to make their way to Hollywood or at least to the publishers' press! There is nothing wrong with simple wishing it were so. It becomes a totally different thing, however, to expect our marriage to be so!

Without belaboring the point, allow me to share below some genuine biblical wake-up calls to our minds that may have been taken captive by the world's deceptive ways and philosophies. I will have to divide this blog into parts as I don't want to make it too long.

1. Wives (including us Christian wives) tend to keep a "rebellious streak" thinking that it adds to our spunk. What do I mean with that? I have heard some wives talk about their husbands in such a rebellious manner and celebrate such a dishonoring attitude as "strength, independence, and being in charge". I remember as a newlywed thinking it a boring thing to be a submissive wife. My mom cut that rebellious streak in me down, and the Lord used her to cause my eyes to see the beauty of a marriage founded on God's order.

2. Women want to believe they are the center of the marriage. This is one of the main themes of all romance novels --- how the man makes her feel like the whole world revolves around them, how the men change for the sake of the women, how the men adjust to the women's preferences, and on and on. The first portrayal of this distortion of truth was in the Garden of Eden. Adam let Eve decide, and everything else is history. We need to demolish these strongholds. God made the man first, and then the woman. The feminist in us cries out in rebellion, but we who are daughters of God ought to know better ---that God's ways always lead to peace and righteousness. Ladies, we adjust to the men. This was one of the sayings my own mother used to hammer on me in my first months of married life. My independent, strong-willed me would automatically respond by saying, "But what about me? Should he not also consider me???" And my prudent mom would reply in words that would go like this:

"There is no me in marriage. It's we. And if there's anyone who has to die to their preferences first, it's us women, because the instruction given to us is to SUBMIT."

Only when I chose to embrace truth over personal opinion did I see the wisdom of it all. Marriage was created by God to depict the kind of covenant relationship He wants to have with us. In the New Testament, we are called the Bride of Christ and Christ as the Bridegroom of the Church. The goal is perfect union, when the heart, will and mind of the Bride becomes one with Christ. Guess who has to submit? The Bride. I am sure some of us smarter women would quickly point out to Christ dying first on the Cross for us. I am not stripping the husband's need to fulfill his own responsibilities of honoring us and loving us. It would also not be love if all the dying has to take place from our side. Both has to be willing to concede, and it ought to be us wives who does so first. SUBMIT. In the epistle to the Ephesian church, Paul states it clearly "submit in all things". The Apostle Peter even points out the wife's submission as that which we ought to give to the Lord! Wow, what a tough mandate to us wives! And yet, God never calls us to do that which He will not enable or empower us to do ---IF WE ARE BUT WILLING TO YIELD to His will.

I have had to change so many times in my married life. I have had to renew my mind the way I manage my time because when you get married, you no longer live for yourself. You live to serve your spouse. The world tries to portray a submissive and serving wife as a "goody-two-shoes woman". But let's ask the independent wives if their marriage is deep, meaningful, solid and peaceful as well as fulfilling, shall we?

I have had to change some of my favorite pastimes in order to be one with my husband. I have had to make an effort to be interested in his own pastimes and interests. We did not have household help in our first year of marriage so I have had to wake up early to prepare breakfast for him. I had to get over my "cum laude" status and serve as a full time housewife for a time. I have had to change the way I see "date nights". I had to shift from thinking like an independent college dormer to a married woman who doesn't own her life anymore.

Do I get a "me time"? Of course, I still do! And believe me, when you surrender to your husband's ways, he will delight in pampering you. He'll give you a break of course, every now and then. But when your husband is tired and you're all hyperactive from the exciting events of your life, take a pause and SERVE your husband's needs.

Him first before me. Just like in our relationship with Jesus.

Romance --- Is He Clueless?

Many of you have probably read my initial post on my previous site at Tumblr entitled "The Unromantic Husband and the Romantic Wife." Honestly, I received quite some diverse reactions to it, which I choose not to disclose. Because of its controversial tendencies, I put it on private mode. However, in my transition from one site to another (I actually transferred thrice --- from Tumblr, to Wordpress, and finally to Blogger) in my search for specific features, I lost the post.

Hence, this is my attempt to re-write one of the same topic. As much as I want to do the whole thing without changes, I cannot for the life of me, remember the words. I decided then to change the title.

When His Day Off Has a Different Meaning

This topic is one of the closest to my heart because it was one of the earliest adjustments I had to embrace. It actually took me a while (maybe three months, the longest) to finally say my I do to his way of spending a day off.

I grew up independent. I spent four and a half years in college alone in Manila, away from family, from the comforts and convenience of home. I owned no car, so I had to commute all the time, mostly by myself, having to find places and at times getting lost — ALL BY MYSELF. I saw it as an adventure and many times found myself enjoying the “lost moments” because it actually added to the idea of real independence. Needless to say, that concept appealed much to me.

So imagine an independent, energetic girl married and becoming a housewife!

Yes, that was my beginnings of married life. I was, and still am certainly NOT CUT OUT for “housewifery”. Nevertheless, it was the season God ordained for me. Though it was full of inconvenience, discontentment, depression and many weeping nights, in hindsight, I know it was a very much needed process for me to go through. By the time I was about at the end of the tunnel, I had already learned to find my significance not in a career or in my visible success. God was redefining how I saw myself. I am so grateful He brought me to and through all of that.

I’m digressing. I know this was supposed to be about day offs. So here is where it comes in. Because I was a housewife, my idea of a day off was of course to get out of the house and go anywhere but near it! Because my husband was already handling the youth ministry and out of the house most of the time, his idea of a day off was to spend it right at home!

At this point, I could hear Evita singing “Where do we go from here?”

Of course we were still newly married, so I always had the notion to spend the day off together as a young couple, but where and how became a regular argument between us. Spending my day off at home was just a waste of time in my point of view. Spending his day off outside the house was a sheer waste of time and money in his point of view.

I remember the initial feeling of being imprisoned and held captive by my own husband. Wives, that is one emotion you should never entertain or even consider for a moment. It will nag at you and knock on the doors of your heart. It will oftentimes demand to dwell in your heart as if it owns it! Do not yield. God owns your heart and He gets the choice of what and who dwells in it.

I was independent like I said. I would leave the house and my husband in it on his day-off and go to the malls by myself. However, I found it hard to enjoy my time when I knew I left my beloved alone at home. It did not take long. I finally gave in and acted on my I do, albeit begrudgingly at first. I tried hard to see it from his vantage point. Somehow, when my heart opened to the possibility that his ideas might just be better than mine, I began to slowly enjoy his ways.

We would sleep in until it was time to cook for lunch. I would get up, cook lunch and wake him up when food was ready. We would then take turns washing dishes as we did not have any helper until we had our first child. We did the household chores together and strangely, I began to enjoy staying home and just being with my husband. We did not have to be physically intimate the whole day for it to be fun. There was that, of course. But not the whole day! Just the mere knowledge that I am doing things together with my husband felt so right and fulfilling. It wasn’t so much about what we were doing as it was about who we were with. Spending time together builds intimacy with each other.

Now if that was what day offs were meant for (which I'm beginning to think it is), then I'd say “I spent it wisely.” Day off does not just mean doing whatever you want. It’s that Sabbath idea of resting —-but resting WELL. There is no rest when you do things that don’t build up your marriage, even if it’s something you personally like to do.

The point is, my style is not always the best. My idea is not always the wisest and most fun. What is interesting, however, is that when I learned to embrace his way of spending the day off, he began to try out mine. I guess sowing and reaping still play a big part in married life, not just in our finances.

Don't be afraid to let go of your style and embrace your husband's. Remember, when you let go of your preference to embrace his, you did not lose anything. You simply gained something new.

Secret Treasures