Sheila's Wifey Wednesday

Today's blog entry was one of my favorites.

There are some of us who wear Past Marriage lenses. Having an intimate relationship with an assumed-to-be lifelong husband carves special places in our hearts. When that relationship ends, for whatever reason, those places don't just disappear, but remain a part of us. Then, when another marriage happens in the future, there is another husband vying for that same space - the "marriage space" I think of it - in our hearts.

The main effect of this is that we tend to expect that our husband will conform to the same space left behind, and act upon that expectation, then are confused, hurt, or even angry when he doesn't behave as we expected.

I compare these carved out spaces in our hearts to rivulets of water, running down the beach after a hard rain. The first relationship has tunneled out areas in the sand, and during a subsequent rain, we fully expect to see the water run through the same carved out places. But, while it may share some of those spaces, it also carves out new paths. And in the end, we have more special places in our hearts; with time, perhaps so many more that the old ones are rarely used anymore.

As second-time wives, I think we need to be focusing on these new spaces, rather than expecting the rain to always and only use the ones left from before. We need to ask God to help us give us a fresh eye to see the differences, and to appreciate them, to take off the lenses from the past and see our husbands as they are, not as another had been.