Death to Control Freaks: Inviting Trust + Selflessness into Newlywed Life
/KATE THIBODEAU
Have you felt a surprising sense of losing independence or control after your wedding day? If you’ve experienced this in uniting your life with your husband’s, I understand.
Photography: Diane Murtha, seen in How He Asked | Ashleigh + Rodolfo
As an independent thinker and doer throughout my life, before marriage I took pride in going about my daily plans and crafting a great big future for myself. Seeing this resourcefulness bloom as a single adult, I enjoyed my self-reliance. I used my motivation to push myself in planning each future endeavor, from daily meals to progress towards my degree or future career.
Marriage throws a wrench in your independence when you realize you are no longer a lone ranger in complete control of your future.
While we usually recognize we are sacrificing ourselves, both body and soul, at the altar, this loss is felt more keenly in the field when we live out our marriage vows together day by day.
As a newlywed, I loved including my husband in my daily plans, spending as much time together as possible. Having survived a distance engagement, we were so enthralled by the opportunity of finally living as one and uniting our daily lives.
However, after the first few months passed, I realized the difficulty of fully involving another’s thoughts, comforts, and wishes into my everyday decisions. Maybe I didn’t plan to cook tonight, for instance, but he would love a full meal after a hard day: a death to selfishness.
These everyday inconveniences could be thrown aside with a bit of resolution and love for my spouse. Of course spouses want to accommodate and serve each other. However, the impact of losing this control over your own self and circumstances is a bigger trial. Life becomes completely shared with your spouse--something I was to learn sooner than expected.
My picture-perfect plans for my life, and our unified existence, was shaken by opportunities for trust. The first of these experiences came in the form of allowing myself to consider starting our family sooner than I had planned. In following Natural Family Planning, my husband and I were perpetually open to life, but coming into our marriage, we--rather, I--had been quite clear in the expectation to attempt to delay pregnancy until a certain number of years had passed.
Marriage is compromise accompanied by trust. It shone through brilliantly when I quickly realized my husband’s desire to become a father was growing, and my preconceived notions were founded in a sense of doubt and denial that God could be calling us--calling me--sooner.
As a self recognized control-freak, I would gladly welcome our family’s future wrapped neatly in a box, signed, addressed, and dated with each big event dutifully marked in my planner.
However, my vocation calls me to fluidity in our plans, to openness to the needs of my spouse and his ability to help support our family, and to patient trust in God’s providence. We must commit to ongoing communication about the direction of the adventure God should decide to take us. Whether that be moving where our careers call or sacrificing comfort for the security of our family, we must always trust in God’s leading hand to point us in the right direction. For when has he failed us before?
As newlyweds, our need to rise above the selfishness of our natures is a daily challenge. God does not call the weak to the vocation of marriage, but he does grant us regular opportunities to strive for virtue. Our vices in our single lives shine through more blatantly when met with the sacrifice needed for a fruitful marriage.
The drastic change from the single life to dependency upon your spouse can be jarring and uncomfortable. My experience, however, proves my husband and I feel most unified when allowing ourselves to be vulnerable, allowing God to direct our lives.
Marriage is not only a death to self, but a death to pride, independence, and all the qualities that drive us to feel in control.
It is a daily sacrifice to take my husband’s needs and desires into account, and a bigger challenge still to entrust our lives into the hands of an all-knowing God.
I do not pretend to be anywhere near overcoming my desire to be in control or in the know regarding our future. Yet I know the graces of marriage allow us to grow in virtue, both together and as individuals.
Rest assured that your vocation to marriage will lead you to a greater understanding of your personal vices, accompanied with a deeper desire to pursue a death to them. I challenge you, and myself, to continuously invite trust in God’s direction for your marriage, and seek to lift up selfishness in prayer.
In those newlywed moments when you feel disconnected or disillusioned by the ideals of your perfectly planned life, know you are where God desires you to be. He is calling you to a greater future with your husband. A greater holiness.
About the Author: Recently married to her best friend and partner towards salvation, Kate Thibodeau is learning how to best serve her vocation as a wife while using her God-given talents. Mama to angel baby, Charlotte Rose, and new Baby Lizzy, Kate has an English degree from Benedictine College, and strives to live the Benedictine motto: that in all things, God may be glorified. Kate loves literature, romance, beautiful music, pretty things, wedding planning, and building a community of strong Catholic women.