Marriage That Sustains Our Love

I’ve wanted to blog this for a while. Luke and I have had the most fulfilling and life-giving first few months. I’m still enjoying the bliss of being with him every day, eating dinner with him, walking in the neighborhood with him, going to community group with him, etc. The newness and gratefulness of each moment still hasn’t worn off and I’m praying it doesn’t any time soon. It’s been incredibly sweet. 

With me being unemployed, us being newlyweds, and living in the 2nd most expensive city in the country, it was inevitable that one of our specific obstacles would be money management. We knew this would be a hardship based off of the differences we recognized in ourselves financially before marriage. It was a specific topic we prayed hard for and one of those areas we knew we would not be able to practice or prepare enough before we were neck deep in it. The first time we went to the grocery in San Francisco, we were hit hard with the “what’s yours is mine” reality. I wanted to save, Luke wanted to spend. I was on one end of the spectrum and holding my ground, and Luke on the other. It was hard. I was anxious. We were at odds. And ever since that day we’ve been face-to-face with even tougher situations financially and with two completely different views on how to handle it. We’ve handled them emotionally and it hurt. I never thought we would see each other’s perspective. 

Let me switch stories for a second.
It is obvious and a topic of conversation often how much of an introvert I am. I get energy from solitude. I love to socialize, but mostly when the topics are deep and intentional, and when I can dive in and know you. My weeks have to be balanced with going out and staying in. Too much of either wears me out. When I’ve had a rough day emotionally, I want to take a deep breath at home and recoup in the stillness.

Luke has always hovered around a balance of extrovert and introvert, or so he thought. This week he’s been under the weather, Bailey was staying with us at the beginning, and we’ve had a social every night. Luke comes home from work sick and he wants to go out one night at the end of the week. I wanted to stay in and recoup from every night we had been out that week. Luke came to the realization that night that he is absolutely an extrovert. He was feeling sick and beaten up, and to reenergize himself, he wanted to get out and socialize. I wish we can say we initiated this conversation in a healthy way, but the truth is we butted heads. Big time. Luke wanted to go out because he needed to, I wanted to stay in because I needed to. I had a moment in the middle of the emotional debate where I felt the tension of two separate human beings trying to live life together as one even in the most seemingly trivial of situations: to go out to eat or to eat at home. 

Now, I wanted to recall these two separate situations for a number of reasons. They illustrate two very obvious ways that Luke and I are different and are trying to figure out how to bring those differences to the table and function in harmony together in the every day. Throughout our dating years, we’ve dealt with similar hardships, but at the end of the day Luke was Luke and Mattie was Mattie. We lived our separate lives (together), and we would go home and do what was better for each of us because we weren’t called to oneness yet and we didn’t want to break that barrier. But here we are full of situations that call for us to figure out a solution to unite two different perspectives, backgrounds, and ideas and move forward.

Although we were separate in those dating years, there was this one idea that the Spirit made so clear to us one night that He has been ushering back to us in these first few months of covenant life, and one I know we’ll be learning for years to come. It’s the narrative of Jesus as defender. And here is what I mean:

When we are at odds, literally in conflict and on opposite sides, our default is to only see from our point of view. It’s human. It’s normal. We don’t even have to learn that, it’s an innate quality. We’re so afraid of the vulnerability. We have this gut reaction that tells us we have to be understood. We need to be known. We want the opposing party to come to our side and understand where we are coming from. “If they just understood!” we tell ourselves. And it’s true. If they just understood where I was coming from, chances are they would retract or ease up and we could compromise. But isn’t that true for the opposing party, too? If you could lay down your right to be understood, to defend, and focus on their point of view for a split second, wouldn’t you reconsider? Wouldn’t you then stand for unity and harmony? We have this inherent fear and doubt that if we were to let our guard down and seek to understand, there is a chance the person you are offering that grace to may not return the favor. And then you will be on the short side, not having your understanding reciprocated, and then true harmony wouldn’t be achieved because only one side is now being defended and it’s not your own. Often times than not, it’s not even for the sake of harmony we are afraid to understand, but mostly because we are afraid we won’t be defended back, we won’t be understood, and that hurts. That’s scary especially in the heat of a super emotional debate.

But I’m hear to tell you that when we are in the climax of the debate and you let your guard down, you step onto the other person’s side, and you see from their perspective, it’s OKAY if you aren’t understood back. It’s OKAY if you aren’t defended by that person. It’s OKAY if they don’t reciprocate the gesture of stepping over. Because you know what? Jesus is your defender. The Holy Spirit will press into them and defend you, whispering "See Mattie's heart! Consider her point of view. Recognize her hurt." He will be faithful to do that. He doesn't promise the other person will listen to His words, but He will speak them. And if they never reciprocate still, can we rest knowing that we are denying ourselves and stepping into what Jesus has called us to by giving grace and understanding and mercy and love? Is that not worth it? Is that not worth the chance of not having the gesture reciprocated? Can we rest in knowing Jesus understands us? It has to be enough.

And that is speaking in broad terms, but coming back to Luke and me. What I love about this idea of stepping over in the context of The Zitos is the covenant that binds us. Not only can I be okay with Jesus being my defender in the chance that Luke doesn’t step to my side to see from my perspective, but I also have a covenant that has sealed every moment of our every day even in the heated emotional debates, even when we don’t see eye-to-eye. There is a convent that reminds me of the deep love Luke has for me and the promise he made to treat me like Jesus does. There is a Spirit inside of him that he submits to daily that promises protection for me. I know that without a doubt, the minute I step over to his side, he’s going to return the favor. Even if he doesn’t emotionally want to in the moment, that covenant runs deep and that binding love that brought Christ to the cross lives inside of Luke and he extends that to me every time. Maybe not immediately, maybe not obviously, but he is going to step over to my side. He is going to defend me. He is going to seek to understand me. And that truth makes me a pile of mush and fires me up all at the same time. That truth makes me want to step over to his side every time, to see see his heart and his perspective. And not just because I know that I then will be understood by him reciprocating, but because I’m reminded of the covenential love that binds us, that makes us whole, and I want to defend him and understand him. 

I can say very confidently that this isn’t the case every time. Nine times out of ten there is a lot of hurt, a lot of frustration, and a lot of circles we run in before either of us remembers this idea of stepping to the other side and Jesus being our defender, but it’s a truth we come to eventually and one I want the Spirit to keep instilling in us until we’re old and gray. We’ll never achieve it. We’ll always be pursuing to understand each other especially in the hardships, but can’t that be said for our relationship with Jesus, God, and Spirit? And when I compare my relationship with Luke to my relationship with the trinity, and see our relationship as a progressive sanctification, there is nothing more I want in my life than to deny myself daily and submit to his wellbeing. 

“It is not your love that sustains the marriage,
but from now on, the marriage that sustains your love.” - Dietrich Bonhoeffer