So, it's been 6 months today that I've been married to James (Happy semi-anniversary!) and since we've been married, everyone I've talked to (strangers, friends, anyone) has always asked me this question "So...how's married life?". It's the same generic question as "So...how's life?" but since that extra word 'married' is tacked onto it, I feel like there's an expectation about the answer, as if I'm supposed to answer in a way that makes people understand everything about married life. And I've always found it difficult to express what I want to say about being married. So this blog post is an attempt at answering that question.
Overall, to me, marriage has been tremendously glorious and special, and yet tremendously ordinary. I'll start with the ordinary side of things. What does married life look like? For James and I, it looks like waking up every morning to go to work (or you can say, James waking up every morning and after hearing three of my alarms tapping me on the shoulder and telling me "It's time to get up"), going to work, coming home, eating together, sharing about our days, getting things done and watching TV shows (we're on Arrested Development right now), and going to bed. Pretty normal right? On the weekends, we'll usually sleep in, go out to eat, go shopping, or visit my brother or friends.
To my surprise, living a married life and living together for the first time with James has not been as troublesome as I had imagined. Compared to other people's stories about their first year as a married couple, I feel like James and I have adjusted and transitioned to being together quite well. Sure, we have our differences and we'll get into arguments. But most of the time our differences haven't caused us too serious of conflicts. For example, I say that James's natural habitat is when he is doing business. When he is filling out forms, looking up information on the Internet, or thinking about something, he is most in his element. Whereas I am definitely most in my element when I am sleeping, lying in bed, or relaxing. This has caused some differences on Saturday morning (when James wakes up at 9:00am and patiently reads/plays games on his iPad, while I wake up 2 hours later still tired). Let's just say I'm not the type who loves to do work.
So married life in many ways is just like regular life, except now you're married. But in other ways, being married is so amazingly different and special. And this is the part that I struggle to express when someone asks me how married life is. I want to tell them that married life is the most amazing thing I have experienced and that no, I do not feel like I got married too young and blew my chances at traveling the world. I want to tell them that I have learned to be more humble and to realize how selfish I can be. I want to tell them that there is an uncomfortable, but beautiful feeling and knowledge that James and I are folding our lives into each other and becoming one. I want to tell them that I have never laughed so much and that there is a deep, deep satisfaction in my soul knowing that God has found a partner for me to share my life and everything with. But instead of quoting Song of Solomon 3:4 and saying "I have found the one whom my soul loves", I usually just say "It's going well" or give a couple details of activities we've been doing lately.
Ah. The inability for words to express my thoughts has always been a frustration to me. But I hope that if you are single, you come to understand the value of marriage, and that if you are married, you open your lives to share the beauty and struggles of marriage with others.
