Mostly reflections on wedded bliss

But first, now I temporarily have no one to vote for. Huckabee is apparently very like his predecessor who was also from Hope, Arkansas! If you look up what Mary Pride has to say, you will find it. She has written some great homeschooling how-to books. You have to be a slippery eel to get endorsements from both the NEA (National Education Assoc.) and HSLDA (the Home School Legal Defense Assoc.). NEA has plenty of untrue and biased, awful things to say about homeschoolers, and while I wish we "could all just get along" and learn from each other, I think it's fair to say that the two associations are diametrically opposed. So he is very likely saying what folks want to hear. But what would happen if he got into office? Something tells me he'd be paralyzed by pleasing everyone.
Hmmm... moving on to Romney? I guess I'll check him out next. I really detest how every voting year, I end up voting against people instead of for someone I believe in. I vote for a person so someone worse won't get in. Argh.
Ok.
I got my CCL magazine called Family Foundations yesterday. The topic is how to keep marriages strong, and why they fail even if people have "done everything right". Even if they went to prep classes, waited a long time before getting married, practice NFP, and have nice stable incomes, a lot of time the marriage is not that happy. The top reason was the balance of work and family life, it turns out, not what you'd have expected, like sex, money or kids. I can well believe that. I ticked off my husband by saying we shouldn't have him working toward another tech certification yet. I said that because he just finished (and passed, yay!) his Windows Vista cert., and it took four months of constant studying, and no time to spend with his kids without thinking how much he wasn't studying. I like our family life, and I know that the certs will help him get that uber well paying job, but we need to pace ourselves! Of course, he wasn't mad once I gave him this long explanation, but why do we jump into being mad right away? Habit, I think. It would be better to assume the other person has your best interest at heart, but I don't think either of us act as if we believed that, even if we do.
Marriage is a hard thing! It's very worth it, but my, my, it's a lot of work.
My favorite part of this month's issue of Family Foundations is when a bride who has always been "open to life" says how she reacted to finding out she was pregnant right away. I simply must quote her, because it sounds SO familiar.
From Family Foundations, Volume 34, No. 4, pg. 18 "When 'Open to Life' becomes more than words":
First, much like us, except we were just being lazy, and it was two months after our wedding:
"Without more serious reasons to postpone, however, we relaxed our application of NFP rules. We conceived a week after our first anniversary. Life stopped traffic, we didn't even see it coming until the brake lights went rampant.... 'Open to life' was suddenly more than words, but a concrete reality in my own body."
"I'm ashamed to admit my reactions when, after 21 days of temperature rise, we realized it was time to call the doctor and ask what in the world we were supposed to do next. We were pregnant! I cried. I broke down in a weeping heap of fears, uncertainty, denial, dismay, and a complete lack of trust in God. I was mired in things of the world like, "Will my college education go to waste?", "Will we be able to afford a baby?" "What about a house?" I was in the midst of that traffic jam with no way out.
"My husband was less than thrilled with my dramatics, as I had always been the one to talk up "openness to live" and "children are a blessing." After a few days of prayer and discussion, our marriage bond helped to replace the fear and anxiety with excitement and uncertainty. This uncertainty, at least, was permeated with anticipation. In hindsight, the perfection and intricacy of God's plan is so evident, but by golly when you're in the midst, blinded by fear, you can only see a backed up mess with no direction that looks promising."

I quoted a lot here, because she summed up our initial feelings nicely. Gabe was a huge blessing in a very big disguise. When he was born, we didn't even know where either of us would be working two months later. And yet we found jobs, and we struggled through several more years of craziness, but it always worked out and now there are four kids and I get to homeschool them, just like I wanted to.
Lesson learned: Trusting that it will all work out is very important. I have seen people take that a little too far, almost like they are testing God to see if He'll come through for them. But if you are having a hard time, see if there was some good that came of it. In our case, it got us out of teaching, which Francis hated, and forced us to meet people and do things we wouldn't have done otherwise. If money comes later, I am fine with that. Now that staying pregnant is difficult and two miscarriages later, I'm glad we got started when we did, or we might never have had children at all. God is so good.