I totally had a great idea for a blog post tonight. I was going to talk about dust and mud. I realized today that in Dhaka city, you have one or the other constantly present. When it is dry, there is tons of dust from all the vehicle pollution and the construction that is constantly going on. When it rains even the slightest bit (it was a sprinkling this afternoon on my way home) and it turns all the ever present dust into mud, mud, and more mud. They sweep the streets every morning with brooms but don't wash them like they do in the US. I was going to talk about lots of muddy streets. But my lovely wife reminded me of something, she said that people were probably far more interested in hearing about how married life is going. Which ironically is a good lead in to talking about married life.
The key thing thus far is constantly reminding myself that life isn't about me. I can't just make all my decisions off the cuff anymore. I find myself constantly having to say something like, "That sounds like a wonderful idea, but let me run it by Esther first..." I also have to be willing to concede that while I am enthralled with the whole mud vs. dust paradigm, sometimes she is right and people care more about juicy gossip about what we are up to. The long and short of it is that we have painted two rooms and are finishing up the decorations in that second room. Delaying this process was a trip 6 hours south to visit with some friends of mine and enjoy the village. Unfortunately, this coincided with Esther getting sick with what I'm fairly confident is a the flu since I then also came down with something resembling the flu. Work is busy but I've managed not to get completely bogged down with it yet. MCC was kind enough to offer me the use of a motorcycle to travel to and from work so that I could spend more time with Esther in the evenings but I've already gotten fed up with it and switched back to my bike. It really only saved 20 minutes and that was if it started immediately. The final straw was when I was still somewhat sickish the other morning and it took 25 minutes to start it. By the time I finally got it kick started, I was only continuing to try because I told myself that meant I could take it back and never touch the stupid thing again. It has been good motivation to get my butt back in gear.
All in all, I think a good friend of ours summed up marriage pretty well. She ran into Esther and her first comment was about how exciting it was that she was married like most people do at this stage. Her response was to say to Esther, "It's a lot of work isn't it!" That I think would be the best way I've heard it put thus far. We haven't been at each others throats but we have constantly had to learn to talk things through and agree to disagree at times. I think I could even go out on a limb and say that the biggest challenge thus far is expectations. You talk a lot about those in marriage prep but no amount of talking really prepares you in the end. Sometimes you just have to live life out and that is what we are doing.
The key thing thus far is constantly reminding myself that life isn't about me. I can't just make all my decisions off the cuff anymore. I find myself constantly having to say something like, "That sounds like a wonderful idea, but let me run it by Esther first..." I also have to be willing to concede that while I am enthralled with the whole mud vs. dust paradigm, sometimes she is right and people care more about juicy gossip about what we are up to. The long and short of it is that we have painted two rooms and are finishing up the decorations in that second room. Delaying this process was a trip 6 hours south to visit with some friends of mine and enjoy the village. Unfortunately, this coincided with Esther getting sick with what I'm fairly confident is a the flu since I then also came down with something resembling the flu. Work is busy but I've managed not to get completely bogged down with it yet. MCC was kind enough to offer me the use of a motorcycle to travel to and from work so that I could spend more time with Esther in the evenings but I've already gotten fed up with it and switched back to my bike. It really only saved 20 minutes and that was if it started immediately. The final straw was when I was still somewhat sickish the other morning and it took 25 minutes to start it. By the time I finally got it kick started, I was only continuing to try because I told myself that meant I could take it back and never touch the stupid thing again. It has been good motivation to get my butt back in gear.
All in all, I think a good friend of ours summed up marriage pretty well. She ran into Esther and her first comment was about how exciting it was that she was married like most people do at this stage. Her response was to say to Esther, "It's a lot of work isn't it!" That I think would be the best way I've heard it put thus far. We haven't been at each others throats but we have constantly had to learn to talk things through and agree to disagree at times. I think I could even go out on a limb and say that the biggest challenge thus far is expectations. You talk a lot about those in marriage prep but no amount of talking really prepares you in the end. Sometimes you just have to live life out and that is what we are doing.
