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.