Prepared Spontaneity

Prepared Spontaneity | St. Louis Wedding Photographer | Marriage wisdom blog post | couple under a tree

“It’s almost as though the potential husband and wife are motivated not to hear the truth about what they will inevitably face, because they don’t want anything to mess up the unfettered affection that has left them in a virtual romantic delirium.”

– Paul David Tripp

Perfectionism or basically trying to keep up with what you believe you should be. Our hearts can work so hard to maintain this level of this imaginative person, marriage, or life that we think we should. That word “should,” is like a death sentence.

“We should be like this.”

“We should do more of this.”

“We should be more like them.”

These should statements create this unrealistic expectation on ourselves and our spouses that can deny reality all together. We lose what is currently going on within us and the people around us. We forget to receive grace, mercy, and love. And if we forget to receive it for ourselves, you better believe we will certainly forget to give it to our spouses.

We have a deep deep desire for all things to be good, which I believe, is from God. We have been created in His image, which is in His perfect goodness. And yet reality hits us on earth. Reality hits us and we aren’t prepared. We don’t know how to respond to what we haven’t expected and disappointment begins to sets in.

My husband and I love taking road trips together. I love them personally because it’s quality time we get to have and I think it’s a great time for conversation. Maybe Jordan doesn’t think so all the time, but he does enjoy it too.

We were on one of our many road trips and I had this thought about my past and my present.

Past Thinking: Before marriage I had a dream story in my head about love. I loved love. I still love, love. But it was an imagination kind of love I created in my mind. When there was pain or something hard, just imagine something good and get away from the pain. Pretend like it’s not there, and make it good on your own.

Present Thinking: After marriage I now live in the reality of true love. It’s hard, it’s complicated, it’s passionate, and it’s one-of-a kind. Would I rather run away into an imagination of love of what I think it should be like, or am I going to embrace the truth and the realities of life to allow real love enter into that space of disappointment or messiness that life so often brings.

Knowing what I do now, I would choose that present way of thinking over and over again. Living in a safe, comfortable, and an always loving imagination is secure and make ourselves feel good.

And yet, we won’t ever really know true love if we cannot accept the truthful realities of life. We won’t ever be fully moved to tears by a fresh wash of grace. Our hearts won’t ever feel this overflowing sense gratitude for kind mercies.

Our pure and soft hearts were made to be loved and tended to in the harshest realties of life. Unrealistic expectations make us all prone to potentially not understanding what it means to be unconditionally loved.

So the question is:

“How can every marriage prepare for the unexpected?”

We can live in life full of things that happen unexpectedly. We do live in that kind of life. But what if we can learn how to prepare for those times. Tripp calls this, “prepared spontaneity.”

He encourages us that:

“You actually can be prepared for things that you don’t yet know you will face. In fact, I am persuaded that this is one of the main functions of Scripture. It enables us to be prepared to decide, think, desire, act, and speak well in a world in which we aren’t sovereign.”

When we gain a perspective that understands life is hard and complicated, we can have realistic expectations. But thank God we aren’t left there on our own to deal with them. We have been given the Word of God to seek wisdom and guidance for how we can best prep our marriages to respond to those realistic expectations. Marriage is relevant all through out God’s Word, and when that becomes clear, you can see that we have a tangible loving way to prepare and plan for the real life expectations, and we don’t have to run away into our imaginary ones anymore.

Final Encouragements

Married Couples: Sit before your spouse and have a conversation about what possible expectations for the future you may both have. Share them openly with each other, and then write down a plan for how you could deal with some of those expectations if they come to fruition. What you will find is that the way you plan has a lot more to do within our hearts than our circumstances.

AUTHOR OF THE MARRIAGE SERIES: Taylor Wild

Note: We do not hold degrees in psychology, nor are we doctors, but people who have a heart to share wisdom.