Brutally Honest (warning, I would put a married or mature audience only disclaimer)

So, I am writing a humbling, brutally honest marriage post. Our marriage is not anywhere near perfect. We tell each other half jokingly that we fight every other day with a once a month big fight where we stop speaking for a few days. Now, this is sad, but it's the truth. No marriage is perfect; if you think your's is, you may need to listen to a few CDs on marriage or read a few books and then talk to each other, it definitely brings up stuff. lol As sad and sinful as the fights are, they are sanctifying as well. I wanted to write a post about this for a few reasons, one to write about how God is sanctifying me and showing me my selfish, prideful heart. Another reason is so that others who may struggle can be encouraged and realize that it isn't the end. I though in the beginning that because we fight so much that we really weren't meant for each other; that my friends is a lie that the devil tries to get us to believe. And lastly, I hope that through telling you about our mistakes, our failures, and then how we fixed the issue, you may learn as well and maybe can be proactive rather than reactive. :) So, here is a look into our sinful but wonderfully sanctifying lives.

I was thrilled for our anniversary. It's been two years! Two wonderful, hard, loverly, sanctifying (I am saying that a lot aren't I? Noticing a theme? lol), difficult, passionate, loving, amazing years. I had been planning what we were going to do for months. I knew we didn't have much money, so I was trying to come up with things that weren't expensive. Then I decided to make a bunch of homemade decorations. I cut out TONS of hearts of all sizes and colors. I hung most from the ceiling in our bedroom and then with the smaller ones, I wrote things down that I am thankful for, appreciate, or just plain love about John and I had them sprinkled on the dinner table. I then bought a few balloons (my plan was to buy a bunch, but again money was tight...so I bought a tiny bag and busted one....so I was left with two.......lol). I placed a small piece of paper in each one saying a few more things about John. I taped those to the ceiling too. They were to be popped later that evening...they still haven't been. More on that later.

I then wrote him some love letters and mailed them out to his work one each day for a few days (I was planning on a really awesome one including a sign to arrive today on Monday which is our actual anniversary but he took the day off.....lol).I set out a box that we keep and we call the "memory box." It is a box of everything we want to remember. Letters, little do dads from different events we have gone to, roses, ring boxes, ticket stubs, etc. I had set out a bunch of massage oils and such too and was planning on giving each other massages.  Warning: this is where it gets to be for married folks only lol. I even planned on doing a strip tease dance. I was soooo nervous!!!! I didn't really follow through on this one too well. But I will! I had the works set out. Confectionery hearts in the shape of a heart on the dresser, candles EVERYWHERE in the bedroom...even a feather boa! lol

Well, we were lame. We were both sooo tired that day and the only thing we did was go through the memory box, which was in fact fun. We both loved that, but that was it. I had dinner and movie with popcorn and pop planned, and lots of stuff. But, we both planned on resuming the activities the following day.....and we had a pretty good day Sunday too, until I decided to take a nap. My nap kept getting interrupted and I was grouchy. John came in to wake me up, and he had gotten all sexy for me and everything.I snapped pretty harshly at him and hurt him. Not only did I turn him down sexually (I didn't realize it at the time) but I also snapped at him and was disrespectful to him. Needless to say, we had a rough day. He left to run some errands and be alone and I apologized when he got home, but he was still hurting. He went to take a nap. We wasted the whole day because of pride. This afternoon, John came to me and we talked it out. There were lots of tears, anger, pride, frustration, and then thanks to God's grace, humility. It was hard. I basically broke down took a deep breathe and prayed that God would just help me to sincerly apologize and stop trying to prove that John was in the wrong. It was hard, but it was worth it. I was being very sinful and I am thankful that God showed this to me.

Our anniversary weekend was "ruined" but at the same time, it wasn't. I have learned a lot from this and now have a prayer in my heart that when John is hurting, that first I realize that he is hurt and second to go fix it and sincerely do so.
Now I know this blog post is getting really long and I apologize. For those of you who are still with me on this, one good thing to do when you are arguing, is show up to the argument naked. No lie. I have done this...only once or twice, but I have done it. And guess what, it got a chuckle and a laugh and we got to have makeup sex. I just need to stop being prideful and start doing things like this more often.

Ladies and gentlemen, remember that this marriage is only of this world. It is temporary. I was reminded of this many times yesterday in many ways, but kept ignoring it. Please don't ignore it. If you are mad at your spouse for whatever reason, even though it's tough, please just suck it up, strip down to your birthday suit, and go apologize. The end result will be well worth it, I promise. :)