Real Life Marriage: Identity Shift

We've been married over five years now, and as the seasons shift, I am also sensing a shift in our identity as a couple. Our last close family members (my parents) left the state. We are starting to recover from our four year (plus!) grind to get my husband to graduation. We've been working at more fairly dividing our household chores for several months. And it feels like we are shifting to more of an us, not a mini his parents or my parents, but an us.

As much as I admire and respect my parents and their marriage, my husband and I are different, and we do things differently. We aren't going off the rails morally or ethically, but we communicate differently than my parents do. We divide household responsibilities differently. We practice our values differently. Sometimes we vote differently. It's us, versus a mirror image of the family in which I grew up. Honestly, that has taken some getting used to. It's probably taken some getting used to for my husband, too, as our relationship also differs from those of his parents.

Our identity is different from the culture around us. I do see my husband as the leader or our home and submit to his leadership, but we each submit to each other, too. This often results in us responding to questions of us individually, "Let me ask [spouse name]" and get back to you. We share a joint bank account. We don't count tit for tat. We are an "us," even as many couples we know live more independently, than corporately.

There is an "us" factor of the two of us being family, too. We don't have kids or pets, but we are a family. We have sometimes very separate interests, but still enjoy spending time together. We are a family. We live out our callings somewhat differently than others, with my job being at a ministry, for example, which results in us not serving in places like church. This is what it means to be us at this stage

I've heard people say before that what is most important is to get your horizontal orientation right, that is, prioritizing relationship to God above all else. By God's grace, Christ is the center of our marriage. He always will be, and in pursuing Him, we grow closer together. Horizontally, though, our marriage might not align with others. It might stick out instead of blending in. I am learning to be okay with that, because it is our marriage, not anyone else's. Not my parents', not our friends', not our churches. It is our marriage, created by God, founded in God, and lived out by us. That's our steadfast identity, one I hope that will stand amidst the shifting sands of life.