Lessons from the First Year: Embracing the Imperfect Wife

I think when I was still single I imagined that married life would be just like Cinderella. You know, the scene where she awakes joyful and energetic, the birds on her windowsill soaring in at just the right moment to help her dress and finish her chores by 10 a.m. as she sings happily along. I imagined waking up to long chats over coffee with Brian, a house that cleaned itself, and the ability to make delicious dinners with the skill and passion of a full-fledged Betty Crocker.

Of course, all of these thoughts were subconscious. I didn't really expect being a wife to come quite that easily (and since I'm scared of birds, I decided early on to nix those); but I certainly expected I would embrace my role as a wife with gracefulness and perfection. Somewhere in the deep recesses of my mind, I fully believed I would walk down the aisle a single girl -- barely able to use a toaster -- and skip joyfully back up the aisle a married woman who could cook multi-course dinners for a house full of guests, keep my house perfectly ready for the Southern Living photography team who would inevitably knock on our door and beg us to let them feature our home, be the kind of lover worthy of Song of Solomon, and simultaneously support our family so Brian could go to grad school without the pressure of an outside job.

When I woke up very sick the first morning we were married, sans singing birds, I should have taken the hint. But instead I started laughing, jokingly blaming Brian for what was clearly an anecdotal experience God was giving him to use one day as he counseled soon-to-be married couples in his practice. As the honeymoon drew to a close and we returned to normal life, however, I realized that life was still, well, normal. Brian still hated mornings, so long chats over coffee turned into him staring blankly across the table with sleepy eyes after I forced him out of bed. Any spare room that might have held guests was currently occupied by hundreds of wedding gifts and half-packed boxes awaiting our upcoming move (Southern Living definitely quit seeking us out, but Hoarders did seem interested for a while). And the only reason we might have had multi-course dinners was because I couldn't even plan the Hamburger Helper and the pre-packaged garlic bread to finish cooking at the same time.

I began to think I should have asked for the birds after all. I also began to think that the Psalm 31 wife clearly never slept. Ever.

Now, a year later, I wish I could say I have become a perfect wife, but I am still far from it. There are still so many days when I wake up and I realize I have absolutely no idea how to be a wife at all. There are still so many days when I seek to derive my worth (or lack thereof) from my successes or failures as a wife, as a lover, as a friend.

But if there is one thing Brian and I learned in our first year of marriage it's this: be filled with grace. On the days when our marriage reveals all of our imperfections, God is still perfect. On the days when I believe I'm a terrible wife, God reminds me I am still His precious child. On the days I tell Brian he deserves better, he disagrees and tells me he would still choose me all over again, that he will choose me every day for the rest of his life. On the days when we flood our kitchen because we don't know how to hook up a washing machine, something about the awful situation still strikes us as funny and we decide there is no better time to go swimming indoors.

That's grace. That's God's grace. And as He has taught us over and over again during our first year of marriage, His grace absolutely must be the foundation of our marriage:

Grace for my husband.
Grace from my husband.
And as often as I discount it, grace for myself.

By God's grace, I did learn a lot about being a wife during our first year of marriage: that the only difference between all Hamburger Helper flavors is the name on the box, that Brian's way of making the bed by putting the pillows under the comforter looks like we're hiding dead bodies, that sucking up spiders with the vacuum cleaner only makes them crawl back out even angrier, that pretty much any disagreement can be solved between the sheets (sorry parents, now we can go back to pretending your kids don't do that).

But despite the usefulness of those lessons, perhaps the most important one I learned is what it means to forgive myself, to embrace becoming something I had always dreaded becoming -- an imperfect wife. And as I've allowed myself to be filled with God's grace, including for myself, I've only seen His grace increase all the more.

May the second year of our marriage see even more grace than our first.

Why Adoption?

It’s a question Brian and I have heard over and over again, phrased in as many different ways as people can think to ask us, but up until now the two of us have never really given a complete answer to anyone. It’s not that we didn’t want to; it’s because we have never, with just the two of us, sat down to discuss fully all of the reasons why we love adoption. However, with our Etsy store opening later this week to raise money for our future kiddo, Brian and I knew it was time to sit down and reveal our heart for adoption to the world (or to the 17 people who read our average blog post). As you hear our story, we have tried to highlight a few of the biggest questions people have asked us over the past few months. Please keep asking us questions. Questions help us grow, help us to define what we believe and why we believe it. We love questions. And we love you. Here we go.

“So why adoption?”

First and foremost, adoption is close to our hearts because it’s close to God’s heart. James 1:27 says, “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” And Psalm 68:6 says, “God places the lonely in families; he sets the prisoners free and gives them joy.” God doesn’t call all of us to adopt, but He does call us all to do something. Looking after orphans and widows isn’t an option; it’s a command to action. Maybe for you it means sponsoring another family’s adoption. Maybe it means inviting foster kids into your home. Maybe it means mentoring a kid in an after-school program who doesn’t have both a mother and a father. Or maybe it means simply and consistently tithing to a church who actively supports the cause of orphans.

For Brian and I, however, James 1:27 means literally opening up our home and our hearts to a little kiddo who needs a forever family. It means calling a child who was neither born of us nor looks like us completely our own. It means adopting a precious child because God first adopted us into His family. It’s not everyone’s calling, but it’s our calling.

Adoption isn’t something Brian and I have decided to pursue on a whim. For me, I have always — literally back to my earliest memory of my future family — wanted to adopt internationally. It was never a question in my mind, never something to debate. I think God knows I have a pretty hard time making decisions, so it was like He made this one for me. Brian, on the other hand, had never consciously made the decision to adopt before God brought us together, but there has not been one time in our entire relationship where he has hesitated or questioned the desire that has grown in his heart for adoption. In fact, I told Brian in the earliest weeks of our relationship that adoption was one of my deepest desires and we could not get married if he was not open to God leading us in that direction. When he was completely and irrevocably open to the idea of adoption, I knew God was only confirming the desire He had placed on my heart years and years before.

This next paragraph (or two) is going to be difficult for me to write knowing it will be made public to our friends and family — and probably even more difficult for you, as our friends and family, to swallow. In some ways it’s painful and in some ways it’s beautiful. In either case, Brian and I know deep down in our hearts that God will make a way for whatever He wants for the two of us and our family, even though we don’t understand fully what that means yet.

Let’s just say that my body has never functioned particularly well in its specifically-female role. During my first week of college, after over a year without a period, the practitioner at the student clinic decided to put me on birth control to “fix the problem,” stating that a year was just too long and I needed to have a period again quickly to prevent infertility and osteoporosis. So that’s what I did. Fast forward a few years to my first visit with a “real” OB-GYN not too long before Brian and I were married. True to the student health practitioner’s plans, my body had functioned “normally” with medication, but when my new OB-GYN took me off of the medication temporarily, my body just stopped doing what it was supposed to do. The doctor said that if I wanted to start birth control again before the honeymoon (we did), we unfortunately did not have time to run proper tests to find the root of the issue before the wedding. However, he said gently, should we ever want to try to have children in the future, I should expect to have difficulty conceiving or carrying a baby. He told me I didn’t have any of the symptoms that would indicate one of the more common infertility-causing disorders, but only extensive tests later would reveal whether or not we would ever be able to have children. He asked to pray over Brian and me, our honeymoon, and whatever the future for our family would be, and I let him. It was a beautiful prayer.

I almost wish I could say I grieved the doctor’s news, but honestly I always kind of knew my body would never carry a baby. Or at least I thought I knew (think I know?). But one thing I actually did know was that I had to tell Brian — before the wedding. For all of you skeptics out there, this is going to sound absurd, unbelievable even. And as I sat Brian down and began talking to him about what I had learned at the doctor’s office, I would have agreed with you. Nervously, knowing I would sound crazy, I began to tell Brian not just what the doctor had told me about the likelihood of me having trouble conceiving, but also that I have always — and I mean always — had this feeling that I wouldn’t be able to have children. Not now, not ever. Instead of being shocked or disappointed as I expected, however, Brian just looked at me with this funny look on his face and said, “Well that’s weird.” I guess my face showed that I thought he was talking about me, because he quickly laughed and said, “No, no, it’s just that part of me has always had this feeling that we would never have our own kids. Like we couldn’t have our own kids even if we tried.”  After two years of dating, there were very few things Brian and I hadn’t told each other. This was one of those very few things and was clearly part of God’s perfect timing. I had given Brian an out should he decide having his own children was a crucial part of marriage for him, but true to my loving husband’s heart, he assured me he would love me and marry me no matter what our future family looked like. (I told him I hoped the front of our Christmas card one day was him and me and our 2.5 Asian kids. He told me not to get too set on anything because God might have different plans. We both agreed to wait and see. But for the record, that’s still how I envision our Christmas card. Except one day we will actually have to decide between 2 kids and 3 kids. No halves in this family.)

Maybe those feelings in both of us, those gut instincts, are just feelings Brian and I have led ourselves to believe. Maybe they mean nothing at all, and maybe the doctor is wrong and we will conceive the first time we try. But what if God has simply been preparing us to adopt all along? What if He is saving us from the grief and the agony and the shattered hope so many of our friends and family have had to endure during their own unexpected struggles with infertility?

Or what if those feelings are wrong and we could conceive if we wanted but we don’t have any desire to have our own children? Is that wrong? Honestly, I can’t answer that question yet. The question of choosing to adopt is one I haven’t found an answer for. My heart wants to believe that if God wants us to adopt and we could put our energy and our money towards caring for children who are already lonely in this world, there can be no wrong in that. But I once had someone tell me (unsolicited) that it would be sinful for me not to use my fertility if I had it, and that guy’s words echo in my mind sometimes. I wonder if our testimony would somehow be tainted if we chose to adopt instead of adopting out of an experience of infertility.

“Will you at least try to have your own kids?”

I don’t know. We don’t know. I don’t want anyone to think it’s out of the realm of discussion or even of possibility. God works miracles — whether that’s in my body, for obvious reasons, or in my heart to make me want to carry a child around in my abdomen for 9 months. :) I have definitely caught “baby fever” lately, which makes me want to hold every child in a two-mile area at any given time. But I also definitely don’t want children of any sort right now, Asian, biological, whatever. I already killed the plant Nana gave us for Easter less than a week ago, so nurturing helpless creatures isn’t exactly my strong point at the moment.

“Why Asia?”

That’s another hard question. The simple answer is because that’s what we’ve always envisioned; those are the kids we’ve always gravitated towards. The complex answer is because that’s the culture that would best fit into the unique features and strengths of our extended family. So for now, we are consistently praying over China, South Korea, and Taiwan. Most of the decision will depend on how adoption falls into our plans for grad school and the bigger picture of life. In any case, we have to be 27 to 30 years old to adopt, depending on the country, so don’t wait on the edge of your seats to see what will happen next (though I already am…).

Which is why, for now, we have decided to sponsor Gideon, paying for his foster care in China for the next year or so until he finds his forever family. Goodness, we absolutely adore this kid. As part of the sponsorship, we will get monthly updates and pictures of little Gid’s progress. And I’m sure, as those updates and pictures come in, our love will only grow for the handsome little man who has stolen our hearts.

As this post grows longer and longer, let’s conclude here by going back to the original question: 

“So why adopt?”

Because my heart bleeds for little Gideon. Because I can’t make it through one day without having to stop and pray in the middle of my errands because my soul is so heavy with longing I feel like I can’t breathe. Because I have asked Brian every night for the past week if he thinks I will ever be able to love a baby as much as I love Gid. Because I have to follow up my question to Brian with another question, asking him if I’m crazy because I would do anything for a little guy I’ve never met and who only takes up six pictures in my entire iPhoto library. Because if I shut my eyes really tightly and focus hard enough I can almost imagine what it’s like to hold him, to touch him, to feel his tiny heart beat, to tell him how much I treasure him, to tell him that he’s mine. Because in moments I have all to myself, I dream about the day I get to carry our own little “Gideon” across the security line of the Louisville International Airport to be greeted by our friends and family who will love that little girl or little boy more than that kiddo ever thought they could be loved.

And that, my friends, is why we choose adoption.