During my engagement, my fiancé and I went through pretty intense pre-marital counseling with two different pastors.  Our first pastor moved a couple of months before our wedding and had to cut our counseling short.  So, we started a whole new program with our new pastor that actually lasted a couple of months after our wedding.  All that to say, we felt like we had our fair dose of pre-marital counseling.  (Which I highly recommend).   I also read several books leading up to the wedding- “5 Love Languages” and “For Men Only”  were my favorites.  I felt like the reading and the counseling was all very valuable and I learned many useful and practical ways to be a better husband.  The most important thing I learned about being a husband, however, came directly from God’s word to me in a quiet time.

Ephesians 5:25 says “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her”.

While I have read this verse many times, it hit me differently this time.

This time I stopped to think about the way Christ loved and loves the church.  I realized in that moment that Christ’s love for me isn’t fair or balanced.  So many times my mind tries to be fair.  In a way, I keep score.  Instead, I should love my wife the way Christ loves us.  We don’t deserve Christ’s love and He definitely doesn’t keep score.  Now, every time I catch myself getting upset in any way, I remember that I am called and asked to love her more.  It is an impossible challenge, yet, I find myself motivated to be more like Christ and my attitude quickly changes from anger to understanding and from selfish to loving.

 Are you registered?

This question was asked over and over again when we were engaged. There was so much anticipation and excitement about this particular task on the wedding planning list. Where would we register? What would we register for? In my mind, these were easy questions; we chose Target and Lowes. I was so eager to get the laser gun in my hands and scan to my heart’s content! I had been making a mental list for weeks.

 My husband and I didn’t ever really discuss registering beforehand – how it would work, what we both wanted, expectations, etc. I guess we both assumed that we were on the same page. How complicated could it be?

 They say hindsight is 20/20 because … well, it is. We found ourselves at Target staring at a huge wall of endless kitchen gadgets – pretty overwhelming. He’s the cook, so I thought he would know what he wanted, but there were too many choices. After we stumbled through the kitchen stuff, we made it to the bathroom accessories. I had been dreaming of brand new, thick, soft white towels for weeks. I could not wait to scan that barcode! But, he was confused and stopped me. His question was, “why would you want new towels? I have tons of white towels from college. We don’t need these.” This was our first real hiccup in the registering process. At first, I thought he was kidding. But that was not the case. It was in this moment that I realized we both had very different ideas about what registering actually meant. I thought the purpose was to start life together with new stuff that was “ours”. My husband thought the purpose was to get stuff we needed and not bother with stuff one of us already had. We survived Target that day and afterwards discussed what happened.

 What we learned: talking about each other’s expectations is really important. Since then, we’ve noticed that the need to communicate and usually over communicated is absolutely necessary.

I was not a christian when we got married. My husband has always been the spiritual leader of our family. After reading Lilly's post, those could have my words.

God is good. After 6 years of marriage (I'm stubborn and willful) I was "saved". God and church have always been a part of Our life together.

I am truely blessed to have such a man. He makes me a better person.