I am an
encourager by nature. At the car
dealership I work for my job entails making customers feel comfortable, and
hopeful that we will fix whatever it is that ails their car; and when I am not
at my 9 to 5, I am a Life Coach, Pre-Marital Instructor and Marriage
Mentor. I am all about encouraging
others…which is curious, because I tend to be hard on myself!
Don’t get me wrong, I am no Pollyanna. The skies are never truly blue in my world,
and just to make life interesting, my husband is my complete opposite in
nature. He has a perpetual positive
outlook on life, so when he once pointed out to me that I am a half-empty cup
type of person, I immediately made the counter-point to him (insert snarky tone
here), “I’m not half empty, I’m a realist, I see how things really are, I’m not pie-in-the-sky like
you!”
I realize
that I am speaking to both halves of the human population right now-the
pessimists and the optimists. I have
interviewed more couples than I can count over the last eighteen years, most of
them preparing to get married, some sadly, considering divorce, and I have
found that most of them have one thing in common with other couples; they are
opposite from each other in how they view life.
A pessimist (realist!) is
often attracted to an optimist and visa-versa.
I find this fascinating. Could it
mean that we need a little more than our own perspective in how we interpret
this adventure we call life?
I know that
I do. It took many years of marriage to
my husband before I understood that his optimistic nature did not mean that he
was un-realistic about things, he was just hopeful and positive. He wasn’t right or wrong…just different. In turn, my cheerful husband learned that my perspective in certain instances was
based on my own experience. Not right or
wrong…just different.
Here is an
illustration: I tend to get really
bummed out when plans my husband and I have made suddenly go awry. One night, hubby and I had plans to go to
dinner and a movie. So when he came home
from work too late to make it to the show, I protested that I was very disappointed that our night out was ruined; and he responded in his typical
optimistic fashion, that we could just
chose to do something else that
night. It was my husband’s nature that
allowed him to see the silver-lining, whereas, my nature had me focused on the
clouds. We were very frustrated at each
other in that moment. We just didn’t see
the situation the same way, so we spent the evening arguing about who was right
and who was wrong. It became clear to
us that we needed to learn a better way to communicate around our different
natures.
Through the
years my husband and I have learned to accept and even accommodate our
differences. For example, my husband has
learned that I need a short period of time to grieve a sudden change of plans;
therefore, he will now acknowledge my lost expectation- he will even share it, and
then we can move on. For my part, I am
no longer annoyed by his positive spin on situations beyond our control. I have
learned to value my husband’s silver-lining point of view. His positive slant is what I need to pull out
of the funk I can get myself into sometimes; and, he has discovered that being
too close to the forest can make it hard to see the trees. Over the years, my
husband has learned that my half-empty (realistic!)
take- often merits a second look at the situation.
It is encouraging to know that God made us- he
knows us. Even more encouraging is that
as long as we breathe air, he is not done with us. We are not a project for Him to complete;
instead, we are in the process of becoming more like his son. Created in his
own image, He put us together in marriage in order to refine us, and make us
holy.
I am
exceedingly grateful for the opportunity God has given to my hubby and me to
grow as individuals in our marriage. We
used to act incredulous towards each other when we expressed a different point
of view, each of us believing that the prism in which we viewed life was right,
and the other person- in the wrong, when all along the
answer was as simple as- just different.
We have different
gifts, according to the grace given to each of us. Romans 12:6
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