Life's Not Fair...But It's Worth It

For a long time I wondered why God would want us to stay together when it seemed that we no longer had anything in common. I speculated bitterly why I should have to suffer for someone else's selfish choices and bad decisions. Years before, I had believed God brought him into my life to help make me a more confident person - to teach me that I could be comfortable in my own skin - because that's what my husband has taught me.  That, and not to worry about things I have no control over.  He has helped me become a more confident, capable human being.  But, over the past five years, I began to wonder, "What now?  Why continue when we are so different, want different things and it seems we are only making each other miserable?".  Struggling through these thoughts, I have come to realize this:  for whatever reasons God brought him into my life, God brought me into his life as well.  Now it's my turn to help him become a better, more confident, capable human being.  Please hear me when I say I am not speaking from place of superiority or piousness.  What I am saying is that I have humbly chosen to accept my responsibility as a wife, my responsibility to support my husband and respect him as the authority God has placed over me and that I submitted to the day I married him, to pray for him daily, to remind him that no other person's expectations, including mine, matter but only God's.  Maybe God brought us together because He knew, as much as I needed him, my husband would need me.  Having to suffer through the consequences of his choices and actions is just a biproduct (albeit however uncomfortable) of my choice to stay and try to be the best wife I can be.  Is it fair? Hell, no!  But haven't we been warned, almost from infancy, that life is not fair?  Over the past few years I have learned a bit about sacrifice.  Being (or trying to be) selfless is hard!  It isn't usually fun.  And sometimes it's downright painful.  But in the end, it is worth it because it grows you into the person God created you to be while showing others Christ-like love and maybe helping them find the courage to become the person God created them to be too.  This is the hope I have for the future.