posted by Star Girl on Blog Entries

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… If I knew then what I know now …

3.) I’d kiss the frog! …

Instead of calling it a frog … or maybe I would have realized I was a frog too! Bear with me as I use an age-old cliché about kissing a frog and getting a prince to share one of my ‘I learned it the hard way’ lessons with you. When I got married I had all the captivating fantasies fed to me as a young girl who loved Disney that I would marry my prince and all he would want to do is love me all day long and I would do the same and we would live happily ever after, maybe not that extreme, but pretty close.

After a few months into our marriage and our natural routines took form, (ex. some days the socks make into color sorting hamper and some days they did not). We are no longer talking about whether we love and believe in the other person, their future and who they are as a person. No, now we are talking about the moments we are confronted with all the very natural ways people live and operate. What their favorite brands of food are, what detergent they like, morning person, night person, neat person, messy person, picky person, non-picky person … you name it, we come in all kinds! But in marriage natural worlds collide and we are faced with the unique challenge to look at our spouses and cultivate the heart of a prince or call them how we see them … frog!

Aww … I confess again. I learned the hard way you can’t call a frog a frog and expect them to become your prince.

Oh my, let me tell you I complained about I how I couldn’t understand why socks can’t make the long journey from the side of the bed to it’s happy home in the color sorting hamper, why cabinets doors need to be shut after you get what you need out of them, etc … etc., and in my heart I judged. You notice how I didn’t mention all my quirks like the pile of clothes I let develop in the closet and all my beloved junk drawers. Judgment blinds us to ourselves but has no problem picking apart the faults of others. I had no problem looking at the frog and proclaiming, “Yes! You are a frog! You are a frog, you are a frog … You are a frog!!!!” Incase once wasn’t enough.

After a couple years of frustration I had the revelatory idea that maybe, just maybe, if I kissed the frog he would become my prince. What if I embraced him and all his quirks? What if I disarmed them the ability to frustrate me? What if I chose loving him instead of judging him? What if I let go that there was this, “before-time-began perfect way” of doing things (like it is in my mind ) and accept that because someone’s way is different doesn’t make it wrong? Awww … what if I treated him like a prince? Just what if … ??? Ug. Yikes. Wow.

So I started kissing my frog. And in doing so I realized just what kind of frog I was. Grace for my husband took the place of judgment. I began to see a prince … I began to become a princess.

Now you are probably thinking, wow, now he cleans up his socks every time and the lessoned learned the hard way created happily ever-after status. No. I hope you’re not disappointed , but we are at about “six out ten times” of those socks making it to their happy home and I still love my junk drawer. The lesson was; it was never REALLY about the socks … it was about my heart. I don’t presume to know much about the illusive happily ever-after but I’ve come to know the joy of a blessed marriage thanks to a couple of kissing frogs .