It's tougher to think you have a good marriage when things aren't going as well...

Don't worry, I haven't completely given up on marriage advice.  (Sorry to those who were hoping I had.)  It's just a little tougher to write about it or feel like you are helping someone else out when things aren't going as well.  It's kind of like typical Facebook posts.  Do we update about all the bad stuff in our lives?  No, of course not.  From the outside, one would guess that we all have intelligent/wonderful/beautiful children and lives.

I try to tell my kids that everyone has problems that you probably just don't know about.  The most popular kid in school has something wrong with her, some problem she's struggling with, divorced parents, or who knows what other issue that troubles her at night.  No one is perfect, even if they look like it from the outside.  I try to get them to think about that when they are convinced that they just aren't good enough in some way.  No one is, and that's ok.  I also try to get them to think about that when someone says or does something mean to them.  That person may be going through something tough that we don't know about, and we have to offer the same grace that we are offered for our own mistakes.  And, personally, I'd much rather my kids and myself be good on the inside than work too hard on outside beauty anyway.  God is kind enough to let that inside goodness shine outside of us more often than we think.

So, marriage isn't always easy.  It's not always on an up cycle.  And lately, it feels a little like Darrell and I have swung to a tougher point.  The few years before, I don't think we argued at all, everything seemed to be humming along quite smoothly.  And then, bam, life hit full force again.  The future of his job became very uncertain.  We decided that I needed to step up my job search, and yet, I still wasn't getting many solid leads.  The kids started having more issues than they'd had in a while.  Darrell wanted to try going off of his anti-anxiety medication for a while.

And it's not really that things are that bad now.  It's just that they aren't as good as they were for a while, so it feels a little blah.  You know?  Luckily, we've been married long enough to have the tools to work through this little "blah".  We've certainly had tougher situations to get through together.  And I love having the solidity of a life-long partner to work through this crazy life.

Some days and even weeks lately, we mostly seem to just be parental partners taking our kids to one activity or another, discussing finances, etc.  And we need to work on that, no doubt.  But, I know that there will always be ups and downs along the way.  And I'm good with that.