My Unfair Button

Over the last almost 6 months we have been meeting with our pastor for premarital counseling. His program is 6 months long and we started it only 8 weeks before our wedding so it’s carried into the first several months of our marriage and it has been magical. It’s like having our own referee. If you haven’t done pre-marital or marriage counseling let me make this oh so clear: you are missing out. 

You guys... I will say this until I’m blue in the face: you do not know how selfish you are until you get married. For real.  Dan has helped us figure out all kinds of little tricks to be better at this Holy matrimony business. But in the process he’s also helped me figure out my triggers that can make me... Let’s just say, not so pleasant. Allow me to introduce: my “unfair” button. 

I have this thing going on in my head that makes me think I have the ability to determine what is fair and what is not. I’d like to tell you I use this made-up super power for good, but, it’s messier than that.  When my unfair button gets pushed I am done. I have virtually zero nice words and want to make sure I somehow win whatever is happening. I don’t know why this makes me so oddly competitive. I seek justice and in my brain that comes in the form of “winning.” But dear reader, who may not know me well, I am the least competitive person, I’m telling you. Just ask my parents who forced my hand into playing basketball when I was 9 until I was about 12. Shout out to them for trying and sitting in the stands during those debacles. This is not my nature but something comes over me in these moments I deem unfair and it. gets. ugly. 

We’re working on this. It’s something we are talking about regularly. But I wonder if it’s something anyone else can relate to? 

In my life I feel like I’m called to roles where I’m left feeling like, “What even is happening? Does God know what He’s doing? That he called little old me to this?” I’ve felt like this in social situations, in ministry, in work, and now in one of my favorite titles: step mom.  

I am so friggin under qualified for this you don’t even know. I’m a fish out of water. How many times is God going to put me here?  I can ask that question, but I know the answer: a million. I’m never going to be ready for where He’s putting me, or I wouldn’t need Him.  And that’s the scariest thought of all. This is Biblical. People have been talking about and feeling like this for THAT long. I’d like to think Paul is a reformed unfair button owner too, because of this passage: 

“But He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.  That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” - 2 Corinthians 12:9 & 10

He gave into his unfair button 3 times and I read that like, “same, Paul, same.”  The difference here? He’s gotten to a point that he has embraced where the Lord can step in. I’m not one for cheesy Christian quotes but this one does apply, I’m not even sure the exact wording but it’s something like: “the Lord does not call the equipped but equips the called.” 

He’s with me. He’s got this. It will be good and Holy and I will understand better and be more like Jesus.  But in the mean time, heap on the grace.  

I suppose to make it up to me in some way, I’ve  been given a really great partner. The greatest, in fact. Matt is my stabilizer in a lot of ways. In the year and a half we’ve been together he’s flown off the handle in the way I do exactly zero times. He brings me down and reminds me there’s time to calm down and be rational. He knows my heart and reminds me of it when I can’t remember because I’m so flustered. He just knows. I am so thankful that although the journey ahead seems a little daunting I can look at who’s holding my hand and delight in it.  Sometimes God doesn’t give us clear answers, but He gives us people; and that is really beautiful. 

I’m growing and changing and most importantly, abiding. 

B