Learning to Dance

Tomorrow is Valentine's Day.  I'll spend it riding a school bus to a small school, sitting in a gym, probably videotaping a ballgame where my husband is jumping up and down on the sidelines.  If we win, it'll be a good Valentine's Day. If we lose, maybe not so much.... but I've learned to get used to it the past few years.

This week, we're reading Chapter 4 of Karen Ehman's Let. It. Go... and it's all about Managing Your Man.  I've never been the manager of my man. He's pretty headstrong...and I'm not. He's loud and extroverted... and I'm not.  He can be a jerk sometimes... but so can I.  I like to think we are total opposites... and that somehow, we've made that work. Most of the time.

If you've read this blog at all, you know we've had some troubles.  We grew kind of distant.  That  happens when one person is coaching basketball and the other person is teaching night classes and spending a lot of time online for those classes.  It happens when neither person feels appreciated, when one person would rather run 13 miles while the other just wants to stay on the couch.  We stopped being friends, and grew to just tolerating one another.  

And then we woke up.  Some things happen, and I won't go into detail, but suddenly we were staring each other in the face and wondering who the other person really was.  And to be honest, I was trying to figure out where I had gone in the whole mess... and we realized that true marriage is not easy.  It's hard work. 

Karen talks about submission, and we modern day women try to shy away from that. We are proud that we are "in control" and that we can "multitask" and think for ourselves.  Submission is about so much more than that, though... it is about respect, and being a partner.  It means that I can see what Wallace's strengths are, and use those for my benefits.  It also means that I can see his weaknesses, and use my strenghts to make him better.  It means listening, really listening, before I offer my loud-mouthed opinions... and learning when to keep my mouth shut, which I'm not good at.  It means being a helpmate... someone who is in his corner.

I get that, especially during basketball season. Noone who has ever coached has been well-liked by everyone.  As mentioned before, Wallace is headstrong and tends to have the "my way or the highway" attitude. And sometimes that means people don't like his decision. It's up to me to be the person he knows is behind him, the one he knows he can vent to without me getting mad.  And again, sometimes it's hard to keep my mouth shut, but I'm learning to offer criticism in a nicer way.

To me, the most important step Karen talks about is learning that your marriage, your dance, looks different from someone elses.  It can be easy in our social media world to compare marriages, especially when I think of all the romantic dinners and flowers and candy and love notes others will be getting tomorrow... while I'm videotaping in a gym.  We have to learn to appreciate, and love, the place we are in individually. 

I'm learning.  I'm happy to say that I think most of the time, I have my best friend back.  It's still a tentative dance at times, but, hey, we've made it to another Valentine's Day.  And His grace is sufficient to keep us going.