When Alex and I got into our first full-blown fight, I learned a major lesson from my husband.
Frankly, I had not entered into our marriage with a proper understanding of it. In my mind, marriage was a contract, not a covenant.
My pastor has written about this and I've been studying it lately, this idea of the difference between a covenant and a contract. A covenant is relationship-centered and permanent. A contract has escape clauses and an end-point. The emphasis is on conditions and obligations.
When my husband and I got into this fight, I ended up yelling something along the lines of, "When this kid turns 18, I'm out of here!!"
It was shortly after our reconciliation that I l saw how different our concepts of marriage were. In his mind, our marriage was a lifelong covenant; in mine, it was going to last as long as it was "still good."
Certainly while saying my vows, it wasn't that I didn't anticipate our marriage lasting or that I wasn't entering into it with reverence and awe. But it took this particular event to see that my heart was off-base and needed changing in order that our marriage be all it could be.
I have always appreciated him calling me on that particular comment. It could have just been left alone as we apologized and got back to life as normal, but there were huge gifts to be found in him bringing it back out.
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