Ruth's Reflections (RR)
It's RR time again!
A couple realizations lately:
1. I'm completely over my quarter-life-crisis. I dove right into it right after I got married, and sometime last year I fell out of it. What a relief to be over that!
2. Marriage is work (again). Now that Wayne is back home, we're readjusting our relationship dynamics all over again. It almost feels like we just got married, except we're more familiar with each other now (as opposed to 3 years ago when we were still getting used to our quirks). The work part isn't so hard though - but it does take conscious effort to maintain and sustain. But I don't want to just maintain, I want to enjoy and celebrate. And I'm making conscious choices to choose Wayne regularly, thus not choosing anyone else nor anything else that would replace him. I'm enjoying him all over again.
3. My individual identity - holding tightly to it! Never forgetting who I am, and where I came from. This goes hand in hand with #2; whenever I'm doing #2, #3 follows closely behind. Even though I'm married and am one with this wonderful man, I am still a distinct person with my own opinions, feelings, priorities, boundaries. Here's one terrible example... I can't sit around waiting for Wayne to jumpstart my relationship with God (which is an awful expectation, but subconsciously I think hold him to that and I know I shouldn't), then I ought to do it myself. But all the while thankful for Wayne's leadership and example, I understand that he is still a human being with flaws and all. Learning to love all of him (see #2).
4. Currently struggling with the idea of self-protection. I have a faint recollection (please correct me if I'm wrong!) that Larry Crabb once alluded that self-protection was actually a sin (not sure which book of his says something like this). Not sure if I read it wrong or got the wrong idea or what context this was from. Over the years as I watch myself (self-awareness is very important to me) I realize how often I do it. I don't mind taking risks, don't get me wrong, but if I sense that a situation or an individual may hurt me, I prematurely back away. This is why some of my close friendships have staled. I admit that I consciously back out of them, suspicious and very self-protective of my heart. (Once my trust in you has diminished, it's a death-defying feat to regain it.) Is that wrong? Because I'm feeling my heart harden up over my parents overtime. Not over bitterness (I'm quick to check myself with that), but with self-protection and suspicion of them. I'm always checking to see whether I'm walking blameless in this.
5. Struggling with God. It's starting to become way too comfortable here. I'm slipping and not happy with it (I hate being comfortable). And God's not giving me any huge shake-up to get me back in the saddle (I wish He would - Nepal was cancelled, among other things). Back to working on my self-disciplines and waiting.
p.s. I've taken out Haloscan comments - switched to Blogger comments (that means all the old comments on Haloscan are gone - sorry!).
Posted by Ruth at 7/25/2005
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