We’re shortly over two months into marriage and wow, what a whirlwind. I’d love to debrief everything I’ve been learning but it would no longer be a debrief, it would be a delong.

So here’s one thing I’ve learned and struggled with and now I’m ready to share.

I’m so grateful for the love and excitement and celebration that my friends have shown me in this season. But many times, there’s a misunderstanding.  

We glamorize love, romanticize it and look forward to it. We have Hollywood to thank for this. We watch Cinderella and see her in all of her misery, she meets a handsome man, she runs, he follows and they live happily ever after 

*cue credits*.

Or we watch the Bachelor or Bachelorette and see the final episode after watching all the ones previous where “What’s her name” goes through so much heartbreak, love and one-on-one’s to get herself to the final moment where “what’s his name” proposes. 

*cue credits*

But, just because love happens in real life, like we see in the movies, there’s one major difference.

The credits don’t roll. 

Our story isn’t over.

You see, we were created to never find any satisfaction or completion in this world, including the love we find in it. 

In high school I was an awkward girl who had a crush on a boy in youth group and wanted to be his girlfriend. The boy eventually asked me to be his girlfriend. Fast forward a few years where I’ve been the girlfriend for a while and I wanted to be a fiancé. He proposed. I got impatient and really couldn’t wait to be a wife. Now, I’m a wife. Recently, I’ve been around a few beautiful families with giggly children and I catch “baby fever” quite often. 

This world is so hung up on “next steps.” 

“I mean, I love where I am now but I just can’t wait for ________”

•     marriage
•     motherhood
•     college
•     retirement
•     dream job

you fill in the blank.

I played it off on the “grass is always greener on the other side” concept. But, I believe there’s more. 

Nothing will ever be enough. Except for Jesus. You can have the fairytale marriage, you can have the tudor house you pinned on Pinterest with the dark floors and white cabinets for contrast, you can have the cute little girl in her seer sucker dress with perky pig tails, you get the bid from the sorority you always have dreamed of, you just got accepted into your dream med school….

but if you don’t first seek the Lord with the season you’ve been given and are grateful for the work He has first done, you will be greatly disappointed with where your feet are in this current place no matter how #goals it is. 

Let’s truly believe that the best season is the season you’re in. 

The grass is not greener on the other side, it’s greener where you water it.

Let’s agree to stop looking at our neighbor’s green yard while ours is dying from lack of attention. Let’s turn around, turn on our own sprinklers and celebrate!

We can make our own plan in our own heart, but the Lord’s will come through every time. (Proverbs 19:21)

We can only be satisfied through Jesus: be overwhelmed by the grace He has shown us, the gratefulness for life we can live because of the Great Sacrifice.

“For he satisfies the longing soul, and the hungry soul he fills with good things.” (Psalm 107:9)

Thomas can take me on the most extravagant dates and meet every expectation.
Some days he can forget to do that one thing that meant the world to me and not meet the expectations my heart has set. 

The beautiful thing is this: the failure of people or ourselves or our circumstances to meet our expectations points us to the only One who can truly meet our expectations “abundantly beyond all that we can ask or think.” (Ephesians 3:20)