Expectations in Marriage

So Sarah Groves’ “Fireflies and Songs” album is pretty much the soundtrack of my life this year. Every time I listen to it, I am so completely blown away by how deeply I identify with the songs. It is something that wouldn’t have been true last year or next year, it is a divine appointment of sorts, just for me, and I love it. A few months ago, the “Fireflies and Songs” song cut me to the core when I was driving to the grocery store. Here are the lyrics:

Thirty years ago I was a little girl riding in the back seat of a car.
A woman sang ‘You don’t bring me flowers anymore.’
I felt the sadness in my little heart
We’re looking for the music in the music box,
Tearing it to pieces, trying to find a song.

I was drawn to you in ways I can’t explain.
I fought like crazy but I couldn’t stay away.
Piled on expectations and lots of blame, like we couldn’t do it any other way.
We’re looking for a firefly moving through the night.
Staring at that one place, swear it never lights.

Were you surprised our hearts were not like ticking clocks,
The faces and hands easy to read?
We both wished ‘if only in the land of Oz.”
And longed for the things we’d never really need.

Now we’re standing in the kitchen all pretense is gone.
You kiss me on the shoulder.
Fireflies and songs.

I will not lie, I sat in Trader Joe’s parking lot sobbing like a six year old with the song on repeat. Hahaha. But the point is that I realized that this is what had happened in my marriage. Joel and I are really happy. Really. I mean I can really say that he is my best friend and I have never known someone full of more love and grace than he is and at least once a day I am thanking God for giving him to me. But I realized that now, after five years of marriage, that I entered this thing with specific expectations on him. Things that he didn’t agree to. It has been a silent grey cloud creeping up onto our happiness and I couldn’t identify it until now.

Obviously there are reasonable expectations to have in marriage. Like faithfulness. But there are many expectations that sometimes we don’t even realize that we have. To be honest, an expectation that I had on Joel was to be different than any other male in my life that had hurt me. We never discussed this, I just had it buried inside. He’d do something that may have looked innocent to anyone else, but it would hit a nerve in me and now I can draw a line between those things and pain from the past. I also had this expectation on him to save me, like he was going to always be the one to catch me. In a sense, this is true, but there are times in my heart that I am falling that Joel cannot see. Does that make sense? Then if he doesn’t anticipate it and catch me, I am heartbroken and let down.

I drove home without even getting the things on my grocery list, I had to talk about it. It was the light bulb moment I had been waiting for. I let him listen to the song, thinking he would get it. I was wrong. Haha. That’s ok, I explained it all and three hours later, we had both identified hidden expectations that we had on the other person that were never part of the deal. I love how in the song she says “Piled on expectations and lots of blame, like we couldn’t do it any other way” because this is the trap we fell into. It is so easy to have a picture of what your marriage and your life will be like in your head and then when it doesn’t look that way, you feel like you have failed. Maybe sometimes that is true, but sometimes it is just because your marriage turned out to be a maple tree and not a buckeye. Both are beautiful and strong, they just look different.

I want to fully embrace my marriage for exactly what it is. I want to always work to make it better, but not to force it into a mold that it will never fit into. It is like chemistry. You don’t know what the result of mixing two chemicals will be until you’ve done it. I happen to love the result, in my case. It is a surprise not only because marriage is not completely what I thought it was, but also because I am not exactly who I thought I was.

P.S. If you are a married woman and you don’t own this album, buy it. If it doesn’t speak to you now, believe me it will at some point.