New country, new jobs, new cat, new home, new bed (that can take some getting used to, especially when there's another body in it and you can't sleep like a star fish anymore), new family, new friends, new church, new culture, new car, new me, new him, new us. But the same big God, thank goodness for that!
Last night, as we were eating our anniversary dinner of fish, roast potatoes (can you believe that in a whole year of marriage I have not yet cooked us a Sunday roast dinner?! And I call myself a Brit! Oh, the shame) and peas, and sipping sparkling wine, we had a little flick through the past year and decided that we had come a long way since those first days of marriage. And we still have a very long way to go!
It's a huge thing to go from living a single life to a married one. You have to completely alter your way of thinking. Every decision you make is now an 'us' decision, down to the tiniest one of 'which candle scent shall we buy this week?' It makes you realise how selfish you are - 'I am entitled to buy the lavender scent even though it makes you gag! Lavender is my signature smell - deal with it!' This was, and often still is, my way of thinking. But I want to do and be better, and that's a very exciting prospect! My growth in our short marriage so far, although painful at times, has been both humbling and fortifying.
One thing that has changed greatly since those first days of marriage has been the way we argue. We are both fiery people with strong opinions. Our arguments used to be a battle of wills smothered in steely silences and tight lipped exchanges, and often they were over the silliest things, like cupboard doors being left open. Now we try to pick our battles and think eternally. In the grand scheme of things, does it matter that there is a dirty sock on the floor three feet from the laundry basket? Will I care about this in Heaven? No. No I won't.
If something is really bothering me, instead of going on the attack like a feisty, yappy Chiwahwah, I'm trying to approach the situation calmly and lovingly. I fail in this frequently, but again, I'm determined to keep at it (rather like that feisty, yappy Chiwahwah).
We've had to rely on God for everything. For the first few fun immigration months, we lived on one wage. We often got to the end of the month with pennies left. But God provided every time, through generous friends and family, or even just the gentle reminder that we weren't going to die if we had to eat Ramen noodles for three days until pay day.
He has also reminded us to go to Him with our problems, rather than dumping them all on each other. As much as I love Austin, he is not perfect, just as I am not. But God is, and there is nothing that He can't handle. Learning to give our problems to Him first in prayer has made my relationship with Austin sweeter, and stops me trying to mould him into who I selfishly want him to be. It doesn't mean that we stop trying to be better for each other, but it means that the unattainable pressure to be perfect is off.
I love the fact that even in one short year, our love and respect for God and one another has deepened, and it makes me extremely excited for the next ten, twenty, fifty years together.
FYI: A good marriage counselling activity, although it was never intended to be, is to carve a pumpkin with your spouse. Austin and I did this last Friday night at a carving party, and it became an interesting team building exercise. We debated, we bickered and we laughed. The result - a pumpkin with a botoxed top lip that was meant to be a mustache:
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