Satisfied.

So my friend Stacy started a marriage blog a few months ago, and has been encouraging me to write a post. So I finally did, and I wanted to share it with you today! Please be sure to check out Stacy's blog here. ​It really has some great posts and resources to help you to have a thriving marriage with your spouse!!

Here is my post:​

Trice and I have something super special. I am more in love with him today than I was yesterday, but I’m not going to say it has all been smooth sailing. In the beginning, people would say, “Y’all are so in love with each other — it’s just because it’s the newlywed phase.” Almost as if it would be inevitable that within a matter of time and life experience we would grow to despise one another. SO encouraging, right? And then some time went by. I studied my butt off in my last year of college. And then I got pregnant unexpectedly (which by the way, can you say BEST surprise EVER?). And then we bought a house. And then we moved again. And again! And now almost four years later, I don’t think anyone can say that we are so in love with each other “just because we are newlyweds.” We have gone through a LOT in our marriage thus far, and we are still in love.

One of the biggest things I have had to learn about being and staying in love is how to be satisfied with Trice’s love for me.

In recent months, I battled through a major season of comparison. Trice was loving me the best he possibly could, but to me, it was not enough. Because of the recent influx of social media that pervades our society, we have an insider view into people’s day-to-day lives like never before. So, it seems that every other day Cindy receives flowers from her husband, and Betty’s husband surprises her with exotic vacations, and Mary’s husband gives her an endless amount of massages and foot rubs. I found myself reading these posts with jealousy, and I started mentally comparing my sweet and perfect for me husband to all these other husbands. “Why couldn’t he just be as amazing as all the other husbands around us?” But the truth of the matter is, nobody posts about their fights. Nobody posts about their tough financial seasons. Nobody posts about their disappointments. And because of this, our view becomes skewed, and we start wondering why everyone else’s lives and marriages are so perfect while ours has ups and downs. Comparison is a very dangerous trap, because things are never as they seem. You can be living in bitterness over a false pretense that someone else’s marriage has no flaws.

So I did what I felt like I needed to do in that season. I cut myself off from social media. I stopped looking at what everyone else’s spouses were doing, and instead started looking at all the amazing things my Trice was doing. It dawned on me how INCREDIBLE he is, and I was reminded why I chose him in the first place!

BUT I STILL WASN’T SATISFIED.

Even with the fresh understanding that every husband has flaws (and every wife, too!), and with the new sense of appreciation for all the amazing things Trice has done for me, I still wasn’t satisified. And I didn’t know why.

Until it finally dawned on me………….

Trice and I recently attended a retreat at our church here in Texas, and at this retreat, I was dealing with a lot of frustrations and insecurities in my life. After one of the sessions I went and laid out in a field behind the church, and started talking to God. And as I laid there and felt the wind blowing on my face, I felt God speak to me, “Sarah, I love you. I love you PERFECTLY. No person on this earth can love you with a perfect love because they are not ME.”

Wow! What a turning point in my life! GOD loves me perfectly!! And because of this, I don’t have to take it so personally when Trice messes up, or if he doesn’t meet an expectation, or if he doesn’t bring me flowers every day. I don’t have to demand so much perfection from him, because Trice is not my source of perfect love. We as wives bring a major injustice into our marriage when we hold our husbands to a standard that is only attainable by God. I can now look at Trice through a different lens. I am thankful for him, imperfections and all, because he CHOSE to be with me, who also happens to be very very imperfect. And I am so very thankful that he hasn’t held me to the unattainable standard that I have held him to for so long, because I would have failed… miserably.

As of recently, I can finally say that I am truly SATISFIED with my husband’s love, not because we are “newlyweds”, but because for one, I am no longer comparing him to others, and most of all, because I am first and foremost satisfied in my God’s perfect love for me!

XOXO, Sarah