Everyone gets interrupted. It happens every day.
You start to do something and you get a call from that telemarketer you’re so fond of. You sit down at your computer to begin working and your email begins to ding as if you’ve just hit the jackpot on a slot machine in Vegas. You’re getting one child ready for school when the other decides that the syrup on their pancakes would be a good medium for finger painting.
Interruptions are also a part of marriage.
Did I marry “the right one?” There can be times in marriage when that question races across your mind like a streaker running across a football field. It can happen when you’re having that same old fight for the umpteenth time. It can happen when the two of you disagree on what’s fun and what’s boring. It can happen when your goals for the future don’t line up. It can happen when the differences between you and your spouse has you grinding your teeth.
It’s during these out-of-sync-times that spouses begin to wonder, “Did I marry the right one?” For some couples, the longer they’re married the more the question pops up. They try to beat the question back, as if they were playing a game of marital whack-a-mole, but no matter what they do, the question keeps coming up.
“I think we better go to the ER.” I could barely hear the words over the voices in my head saying, “This can’t be happening! Not to me! I’m too young! This can’t be a heart attack!”
On the way to the ER, I convinced myself that since I wasn’t having the typical heart attack symptoms it probably wasn’t a heart attack. I was feeling pretty confident of that when I walked into the ER, but that confidence started to scatter when the guy at the desk immediately moved me to the head of the line and insisted that I go from one room to the next via a wheel chair.
So there I am… in an emergency room, connected to machines, pain in my chest, and alarms going off because my blood pressure was going for an all time record.
Have you ever noticed that people often tell you, “Have a good day!” but they don’t tell you how to have a good day? Doesn’t that seem a little odd? It’s like telling someone, “Have a million dollars” and then walking away without telling them how. Wouldn’t it be great if they said, “Have a good day…and here’s how you do it”?
I have a graduate degree in Marriage and Family Counseling. I work with married couples weekly, and I regularly write about how to improve marriage. Still, it was an elderly couple at McDonald that taught me my most recent lessons on marriage.
We all want to be comfortable. We want comfortable chairs, comfortable shoes, comfortable beds, comfortable clothes, comfortable retirements…comfortable everything.
We especially want comfortable marriages. We want marriages that are calm, happy, and easy. We want spouses who like what we like, act like we act, and always think we’re wonderful. We also want to win the lottery, but that’s probably not going to happen either.
Marriage is never completely comfortable. It is always a mixture of comfortable and uncomfortable. Because of that, you’re marriage will either be uncomfortably comfortable or comfortably uncomfortable.
It’s Labor Day and I’m sick. Not loosing your last meal in the commode sick. More like head full of concrete can’t breathe sick. I’ve tried every remedy I could find in our cabinet of over-the-counter promises, but no magic bullet.
I woke up early this morning, after a hit-and-run night of sleep. Restless and mouth-breathing, I got up to find my wife sleeping on the couch so as to not catch what might be the next big thing on the CDC’s top 40. She got up to go to bed and there I was. Couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t stop peeing from all the water I’m drinking to stay hydrated.
This is not the way I wanted to spend Labor Day. Why did I have to get sick now?
“And they all lived happily ever after.” We’ve heard these word as children, when our parents would read us our favorited story for the umpteenth time. We’ve heard these words as parents, as we’ve read our own child’s favorite story for the umpteenth time.
“Happily ever after” are the words that bring closure to the story. They are the words that resolve the dissonant chords of the story. They are the words that say, “Everything’s alright now.” They are the words we all look for. They are the words we all long for.
The dreaded check engine light. I don’t know about you, but I hate the check engine light. I always fear the worst when I see it. It’s like the amber light of doom to me.
But despite how I feel about the check engine light, it really is my friend. It lets me know something is wrong so I can fix it before it gets worse. It’s much better to have a check engine light come on, then to have the car blow up suddenly without warning.
Thankfully, each marriage comes equipped with a check engine light.
“You have to be patient.” I didn’t like hearing that advice as a child and I’m not a big fan of it as an adult. It’s difficult to be patient. If you don’t believe it, check out the video The Marshmallow Experiment.
We’re one week away from moving into a new house. We still have some packing to do, but we’re so close it’s hard to be patient. There are things we want to do, but we can’t because we’re not there yet. We have to be patient.
What I’ve learned about marriage from buying a house is there are times in marriage when you know what you want, but you’re not there yet and you have to be patient. For example…