“The reason the American Army does so well in wartime is because war is chaos, and the American Army practices it on a daily basis.” – from the post-WW2 debriefing of a German general

War is chaos, and so is marriage (one of my favourite blogs is called Messy Marriage!).

It’s tempting to hope that once we marry, life will fall into a kind of order…it might be what we think we remember from our parents’ relationship, or what we see on TV and the movies, or what we read about.

But the thing is, when we grew up we only saw the outside of the relationship, the order built like a facade to hide the disorder and fractiousness within. And fictional relationships are…well, fiction. They’re built by their authors to illustrate a story arc, and have the order they portray artificially imposed…kind of like using a 50-ton hydraulic press to make a square wooden peg fit a round hole in a steel plate. Ouch.

The relationship’s a mess from the start, dealing with different experiences, different family backgrounds, and, oh, yes, different genders.

Accept the mess. Embrace it, and remember that from the compost, come the flowers.

If you have a moment, please stop by my other blog, Blessed Are The Pure Of Heart. Today’s topic is “So I Married A Sniper“.