Relationships are always full of transition.
Whether you’re loving your single years and learning to be in a relationship with yourself, or making the most of the dating years with your person, or figuring out that waiting in marriage is a reality you have to contend with on the regular.
Relationships are always full of transition.
So it’s ironic that we spend so much of our lives trying to get from one relationship status to another in a way that suggests that the next status is the ultimate one.
For the single, it becomes an exercise in matchmaking to find the one.
For the dating, life is reduced to a sprint to the altar.
For the married, there’s a never-ending marathon to keep up with the Joneses in everything from lifestyle to children to fancy online facades.
Here’s a healthy dose of the obvious: your next relationship status is not IT.
It’s not what will finally make you happy and fulfilled with your life.
Far from it.
The equation is: Godliness + contentment = great gain and not: Godliness + great gain = contentment.
Rev. Sarah Muendo
The strongest chains are never the ones that others put on us, but rather the ones we place on ourselves. And I think discontentment is the biggest self-imposed prison of all. Because no matter how good you have it, it’s never enough. Worse still, you don’t even realize just how good you do have it.
Conversations about relationships typically put the burden of success (and failure) on the other person – the knight in shining armour who’s yet to show up, the prince charming who’s wooing you (or at least, supposed to be doing so), the ultimate king who wins your heart and keeps it.
Yet, the buck largely stops with us. What we choose to do with what we have, and what we don’t.
The work it takes to build successful relationships – with yourself and your partner – requires you to recognize the intrinsic value that exists to begin with.
If you don’t, you’ll end up tossing rocks away not realizing that with a bit of time and polishing you’d have gorgeous diamonds in your hands.
Your being single isn’t issue. Your devaluing your single years is.
Your dating relationship and your partner aren’t necessarily the issue. Chances are your outlook about your what you’re dating life is supposed to be is hindering you from seeing and appreciating all that it already abundantly is.
Your marriage and spouse aren’t necessarily the problem. If I had a megaphone and could only say one thing about marriage repeatedly, it’d be – give yourself permission to be where you are as a married person and as a married couple. It takes time to get the hang of things. It takes time to get better at married stuff. It takes time to learn to love one another better…and to find rest in the truth that the learning will never stop.
We can’t expect others to applaud our lives when we don’t even appreciate what we have right here, right now.
Who else will love your life – and the crazy, messy whirlwind it is – if not you?
Who else will love your dating relationship…and your partner – strengths, flaws and quirks– if not you?
Who else will love your marriage…and your spouse – silly conversations, difficult adulting decisions and everything mundane in between – if not you?
Don’t let a good life pass you by while you wait for a perfect one that will only ever exist in your imagination.
Show up for your now.
