The Joy of Process...:)

I have officially been married for three weeks, four days, and about three hours. In that short amount of time, I feel like I have experienced every emotion a person can know: love, joy, exultation, failure, sorrow, anticipation, epiphany, exhaustion...the list could go on. To say it even better, in the past three weeks I have found myself entering into life.
To be quite honest, I was really unprepared...I mean, horribly unprepared. The fault is mine. In my own world of hearts and butterflies and rose-colored glasses, I had painted a picture of reality with colors that don't exist...and that never will. In my mind, my "reality" was so perfect. Anything that didn't match it was not going to be good enough...period. It didn't take long to realize I was going to always be a very disappointed girl...:)
But, God is gracious (and forgiving), my husband is patient, and my earthly father is wise (brutally so...:/). Thanks to them, my eyes were opened to so many things. Reality (and for that matter LOVE) is what it is. It's not perfect, neat, and definitely doesn't fit into any pretty boxes I know of. Instead, it's messy, painful, and at times ugly. I didn't want to believe it...I couldn't...how could something that was supposed to be as perfect as I'd made up in my mind be so..well...not??
And yet (and I had to realize this with a lot of patience and grace...), that's the BEAUTY of it. It's not going to be dreamy, romanticized, or perfect...at least not our idea of perfect. But what is so amazing about God is that He designs us that way. The very fact that we'll never get it all right drives us to realize how badly we NEED Him. We have no other hope of joy, of life, of peace, or satisfaction without Him. The very fact that we are a jacked up people leads us to the One who is above it all. He alone is worthy...of love, hope, expectation, desire, delight...all of it.
Probably the other single most valuable lesson I have learned in all of this is that the journey...the path to this absolute satisfaction and delight in Him (and the joy that results in the other parts of my life because He is all), is a process. It takes time...it takes energy...it takes work. Not in the sense that we accomplish it all on our own...I'm no longer naive enough to believe in bless your heart philosophies like that one. Rather...God works in us...but it takes time and diligence for us to get out of His way, and to begin to work out the things He is working in.
And so...I am learning the joy of process. The joy that daily, I am learning what it means to place all my hope, all my expectation, all my desire, and all my love in the only One who will truly satisfy. I am learning what it means to die to myself, that I might rise to a life that is hidden in Him...that I might set my heart and mind on the things above, and in doing so find a burning satisfaction, a desire, a joy that consumes any girlhood fantasy I might want to create. I pray that you might know the same as well.
....live loved...
:)