What You Don't Know

Chicken Soup for the Soul: True Love

BY: Jamie Driggers

Love one another and you will be happy. It's as simple and as difficult as that.
~Michael Leunig


When you are young and uneducated in the game of life and picking a spouse -- particularly if you are a young, stupid Christian and trying to obey God -- your reasons for getting married probably don't go much further than the fact that you are "In Love" and your hormones are raging. A year seems like a long time to have been together, thirteen years is rather obscure, and a lifetime is unfathomable.


You don't know that thirteen years will pass in the blink of an eye.


When you put on the white dress and vow "for better or for worse," you don't know how bad the worse can really be. You don't know how hard it is to suffer three years of infertility, defend your decision to adopt to people who think you should put your resources into fertility treatments, or how another three years of postpartum depression when you do have a baby can tear you apart. You don't know when you vow "for richer or poorer" how poor that really means. You don't know that the $100 a month you lived on in college will look like a windfall after thirteen months of no income with small children.


When you pack up your things and move into your new home together, you don't realize that that pair of pants that he wads up on the floor will always be there, and the dishes she leaves in the sink will, too. Even though you didn't intend to marry your father or mother, you don't know that you will pull them into an argument in order to make your point that dishes shouldn't be left in the sink and pants don't belong on the floor if you intended to wear them again.


You don't know that those deals you made in the first week, on the honeymoon, won't be kept and that no matter how much you hate it, no matter how many times you remind them, the dirty dishes will still be out and the toilet will still have a ring (until the mother-in-law comes to visit).


You have no idea that he will still want you with baby flab and saggy breasts. You don't know how special it will be to look into little blue eyes and see your spouse. You don't know that when you look into the brown face of your son, you will also see your husband because nurture makes a fool of nature. You don't know that when you do finally get pregnant after adopting that your husband will tell you that when a white baby comes out, he'll know you've cheated because his babies are brown.


You don't know that when you get a wild idea to become a writer or start your own company that your spouse will be your biggest cheerleader. You don't know that when even your family thinks your spouse is crazy, you'll cling even tighter to him. You don't know the good that will come.


Face it, when you're young and stupid, you don't know what you are getting into.


You don't.


But I'm glad I got into it.

http://www.beliefnet.com/Inspiration/Chicken-Soup-For-The-Soul/2010/12/What-You-Dont-Know.aspx?source=NEWSLETTER&nlsource=49&ppc=&utm_campaign=DIBSoup&utm_source=NL&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_term=mail.ru