5 things I've learned in my first year of marriage

My wife recently made an excellent blog post about five things she had learned over the first year of marriage. Now of course I feel obligated as well to make some claim of having learned a thing or two. Or actually five, since I figured if I can't top my wife, at the very least I should match her. But enough chit-chat, let's get on with the list.

1. It's not about me
I can already hear you going "You didn't know that already?". Well, yes... In a way. I'd read Ephesians 5 before we married, and learnt that I was to love her like Christ loved the Church, and sacrifice myself for her. I knew it wasn't all about me. But then we got married, and guess where my focus went? Right to me. You see there's a difference between knowing and knowing. I'm slowly learning to readjust my focus away from myself and what fits me at the moment.

2. It's not really about her either
I love my wife dearly, but our marriage can't be about us. It was ordained from eternity past to be about Christ. So while trying to focus on her is better than focusing on me, it still falls very much short of the true purpose of our marriage. It is easy for me to make an idol out of my wife (after all, she is pretty amazing), but as wonderful as she is, she can't really live up to the expectations that one would have of a deity. I have learnt that our marriage works best when we both derive our love for each other, our motivation and our satisfaction from Christ, and neither of us try to ascend the throne he's set up for himself in each other's hearts.

3. Passive anger is just still sinful
I've never really had anger issues. I'm not saying I never had anger, I just said I really didn't have any issue with it. I figured it was okay since I don't have a very aggressive personality. In stead of yelling or punching, I'll pout, go into some mood and walk around feeling sorry for myself. However, to nobody's surprise except my own, it turns out that anger is anger no matter how it expresses itself. The same pride and selfishness that makes another man hurt his wife by yelling at her, makes me hurt my wife by ignoring her or go sit on the couch and "read" with that special look on my face.

4. The tongue is a fire
On a similar note, I'm not one to scream obscenities from the top of my lounges against my wife. So I figured that whole thing in the book of James about the tongues being set on fire by hell didn't really apply to me. Well, seeing the effect my words can have on my wife has led me to rethink that. Even a small criticism from one you love dearly can tear down very much. And to be frank, whenever one of my afore mentioned moods have led me to open my big mouth, I've rarely thought to my self later on "hey, I'm sure glad I got that off my chest".

5. Frugality isn't always a virtue
Believe it or not, I think this has been the hardest one. No I'm serious. You see I'm more or less frugality incarnate. My wife is not. My frugality probably stems partially from the way I was raised (10 kids, plus a stay-at-home mom leaves little room for waste), and partially from my time of living on my own as a student with minimal income. So my m.o. is to go with the cheapest option for everything, and don't let anything go to waste. I was shocked to learn that this behavior is not the most effective way to make my wife feel treasured (cf. the "cheap plate incident"). I think one wake up call (although I'm a snooze button kind of guy) was when after a few weeks of marriage my wife saw me intently studying a used coffee machine capsule (for scientific purposes), and spontaneously burst out "DON'T eat that!". Now there is a place for frugality, after all, we live on one income, and have to get by on a tight budget, but I'm slowly learning to lighten up at least every once in a while.

Alright, that's all folks. Stay tuned to see if next year I'll finally learn to close that toilet seat and put the cap on the toothpaste as well.