Reality.

The reality of marriage. Before you are married and especially when you are younger you have these ideas of what it will be like to be married. Not the day to day stuff, but the bigger events of a married couples' life. Like, where your honeymoon will be or where you will live, the type of house you will live in, the number of kids you will have, how you will celebrate anniversaries, birthdays, travel plans, etc. I remember after having my oldest child being saddened with the birthing process because it didn't happen how I perceived it would. The other day I was watching some skits online for The Skit Guys (check them out, they are awesome http://www.skitguys.com/. You can also see some of their skits from the Youth Specialties Myspace page http://www.myspace.com/youthspecialties.) One of the skits that I was watching was called perception/reality. Although it did not deal with all issues of our life that we are faced with, what I realized is that almost every aspect of our life we have a perception of how it should be and we have the reality of how it is. Marriage is no different. I remember being in high school, and even when I was newly married, thinking of how we would spend our anniversaries and all the places we would travel. Now however, life has shown me that reality is different. Not bad, just different. We don't do big things on every anniversary. Heck, there are some anniversaries that we don't even spend together. We don't buy each other extravagant gifts for birthdays, sometimes all we do is make each other a card. What I have realized after 12 years of marriage, and possibly I realized it earlier and didn't know it . . . is that being married is about the every day. How we spend our time together and not how we celebrate the milestones. We show our love for each other not by buying extravagant gifts or going to expensive dinners (although every once in awhile we may) but by folding each others laundry, doing the dishes, or watching movies together, or having the last words out of our mouths each night be I love you! These are the things that define our relationship, our marriage. This makes me contemplate whether perceptions are worth it. Should be perceive how things are going to be? I think that sometimes yes we should and then other times I think maybe we shouldn't. Maybe perceptions get us in trouble or maybe when reality isn't how we perceived it we are disappointed. What I conclude, while still contemplating the issue, is that we need to be aware that what we perceive is not reality and to not let what we perceive dampen our reality because in so doing we may miss out on some of the best times of our lives. I am happy with my reality in relation to my marriage. I am happy with the little things that all add up to what I have.