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Couples Fight.

It’s true — even the most picture-perfect couples have a good ole fashioned argument from time to time. Sometimes there’s yelling. Tears. Broken stuff. Silent treatment. Slamming doors.

The substance of the argument is irrelevant (plus, Casey made me promise I’d attempt to show discretion in my posts, haha, probably in anticipation of this very post), but I write this to say, “It happens.”

The Kind of Fight

Sometimes fights are just little tiffs: “Oh. My. Goodness. Did you really leave the almost-empty roll on the toilet paper holder!?” (Yesterday’s problem). And sometimes they are big flashy fights. Today Casey and I starred in of those Oscar-worthy scenes.

But we talked it out. We said we were sorry. We (ok fine, *I*) cried it through.

And then, Casey suggested we scrounge up our change and splurge on Wednesday-night gelato.

Because that’s the stuff marriages are made of: make-up ice cream on a 56 degree day and a quiet walk by ancient Cathedral ruins while the suns starts to set. Forgiving each other when you might still be mad. Being the first to reach out and apologize, just to break the silence and remind the other person you’re in it for the long haul.

Want to know the verse I read this morning?

Colossians 3:12-14:

Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.

Seriously.

I wrote in my journal, “What if we really all treated each other like this? I need this in my marriage first.” And then we got in a big fight. And I had to be humble. And I had to forgive and ask for forgiveness.

I had to take a deep breath, dig through my dresser drawer and put on some real, till-death-do-us-part love.

But what is love?

1 Corinthians 13: 4-8

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.  Love never ends.

It hurts on a day like today to read those verses. Love like that is so beautiful, but so challenging. And most of the time, we get it all wrong.

I could have just posted a nice filtered Instagram picture of Casey and I snuggling with ice cream cones. I could have made it look like we were rocking this whole “patient and kind” kind of love.

But that’s not real.

Real is screwing up. Real is being irritable, arrogant and rude. And real is forgiving, moving on, and savoring that picture-perfect coffee gelato in a chocolate-dipped ice cream cone.

Oh, and real is this blurry picture of us that you don’t post to Instagram: 

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