How to not ruin your marriage before it begins.

The other night I had a dream that I was running around in a real life Minecraft world with my (non-existent) husband. The thing that was significant about the dream was that true to middle-schooler fashion, I was constantly running off and doing my own thing and not really interested in contributing to our minecraft house and minecraft life. Extremely selfish. The main purpose of me running off was because I desired to be the center of attention, because I felt I wasn't the center of his attention. Running away and wrecking havoc in other people's Minecraft lives was how I decided to go about getting his attention.

The three things that I woke up thinking, first was that he really looked like a football player I've seen on campus (red hair, slay me), secondly, that I should probably stop playing Minecraft/Don't Starve so late, and lastly, that my behavior was super immature. Even though it was just a dream, I woke up with extremely feelings of shame and even bashfulness.

The bashfulness reaction reminded me of the heroine of Redeeming Love, who runs away from her amazing husband who wants to provide an amazing life for her. In the same way, maybe part of me didn't want to allow my husband to contribute to my life in that way. Maybe it is a sign from my subconscious that I'm still too selfish to be a good wife to anyone.

The dream was probably the result of a perfect storm of late night Indian food, having a dinner guest who talked to me about pregnancy, children, marriage and relationships, and the reading that I've been focusing in on lately.

I don't know how to interpret my dream beyond that. But I do know that you have to work for your marriage like you would your career. You have to invest, improve, work long hours and sometimes late nights. It's important to learn how to fight, and how to not take things personal. If you want to have good stories when you're 50 years in, you have to start in year one, and probably even before that.

I'm relishing my single years like they're going out of style. As a Christian university graduate, I see wedding notifcations all the time on facebook. Baby pictures are popping up from all angles. I'm not envious. It just makes me appreciate even more the time that I have now to cook the foods I want, when they want, and wreck on other people's Minecraft houses as I well please. (But not really because that's extremely rude.)