Here's to Being a Mrs.

It's been exactly 8 months 1 week and 3 days since my last blog post. My hiatus wasn't intentional and it also wasn't something that went unnoticed. Actually, I've attempted to write posts since then, most of which I either never finished or never actually pressed the "publish" button. I guess some might say I've had writer's block, but it feels a bit more complex than that.

How can I write when I have both nothing to say and everything to say simultaneously? How can I write when everything in my life is different and yet everything is pretty much still the same? Where do I start? Where do I end?

It's like when I'm asked the oh so familiar, "How's married life?" question. Well, sir, I just don't know how to answer you. You see, I've been married now for a little over four months and my mind and heart and days are buzzing with thoughts and feelings and tasks that I never even knew existed (or at least had never experienced before). And while it's wonderful and fun and so very delightful, it's also hard and a lot of work and I'm learning things about myself, things that sometimes feel a bit dark and (to be honest) a bit scary. But I guess it's best to have that sin deep inside of me uprooted and shown for what it really is than to live in ignorance, never really experiencing true freedom. So I'm grateful to marriage for that. And I'm grateful to marriage for all of the gooey warm feelings, too. And sure, time commitments are a bit more challenging, but I also get to live with my best friend now and that's pretty great. And...

Truth is, I sound like a rambling idiot. Truth is, no one really wants to hear that answer. So I smile and exclaim, "Marriage is great!" And I move on to the next question from the next person, worded a bit differently, but at its core is really just the same.

As you can see, I haven't written because even though I have a million thoughts, I'm not exactly sure what to say. These days, my thoughts tend to ramble and my heart tends to feel 10,000 emotions every day.

Married life is very different than single life. Actually, married life is much more different than I ever thought it would be from the single life. My hopes, dreams, actions and my past, present, and future are no longer my own. I am fully known and fully loved by another, despite my shortcomings and sin, which is truly a remarkable thing. All of that is very difficult to fully wrap my head around. I don't think one is better than the other, married life from single life, they are just very different, and it takes some time to adjust.

Marriage has brought change to almost every area of my life. I'm living with a permanent roommate (my husband) and learning how to share everything I own with someone else. I'm learning how much bills and taxes actually cost and I'm living in a different town and in a different state. I'm a part of a new family with new traditions, new ethnic backgrounds, and new faces to love. I also have a new last name, which is a daily reminder that my life is new, that my whole self now belongs to another.

The piece I'm pretty sure will take me a bit longer to fully grasp is the fact that there is now a "Mrs." before my name. Mrs. Oh, that's strange. But I guess we're all growing up. I guess that's what everyone talks about when they mention how fast life flies by because it feels like it was just yesterday that I was in high school, going to swim practices and play rehearsals. Now all of a sudden I'm a Mrs. and I have doctors that are around the same age as me and I'm beginning to plan for a life with children. I'm suddenly at the life stage where I relate more to the parents in sitcoms than to the teenagers in them, and I'm not quite sure when that shift happened.

Yet, I'm still me. I still go to the same church and have the same job. I still hang out with the same friends and have the same hobbies and passions. I still laugh at (and tell) the same jokes and I still cry over the same movies.

Not knowing how to reconcile all of that, I decided to just cut my hair, which is eight inches shorter with bangs now because, well, that's what girls do when we don't know what else to do. It was the only thing I could think of doing to help the pieces fit all together in my mind. Now when I look into the mirror, I see the same person, but I look completely different. I see the old and new merging into one complete reflection--not broken or confused, just different. I still see me, it's just a new me.

My husband keeps saying, "We're not the same people that we were 4 or 5 months ago," and it's true. Marriage requires you to grow and change and mature, to make decisions based on another person and not on yourself. Marriage teaches you to love and care, even when you don't really feel like it. And I've found that though I'm still the same person, I am very much a completely different person too, one that I hope is more like Christ.

So there you have it. I haven't blogged, not because I'm lazy or apathetic or too busy, but because I haven't known where to start. Because I feel like in the past 8 months, 1 week, and 3 days everything has changed and yet nothing has changed at the same time.

But I think I'll start right here, right in the middle of the ramblings, right in the middle of my over-stimulated, glowingly newly-wed, fragile thoughts and feelings.

Life is good. Life is hard. Life is much more complex than I ever imagined.

But it's rich and wonderful and as I press forward in my relationship with God and in my relationship with my husband, I find that I wouldn't want it any other way.

So here's to marriage and new schedules and new traditions. Here's to being in love and committing to grow with and for another. Here's to new haircuts on old faces. Here's to being a Mrs.