If you could re-do your marriage, what would you change? Wisdom after losing a spouse

If you could re-do your marriage, what would you change?  My friend Lisa has had the chance to not only answer the question, but make the answers a reality.  Widowed at a young age, her experience of loss has given her a tremendous amount of wisdom that has made her second marriage so different from her first.  

Lisa and I went to college together at Baldwin-Wallace back in the '90s.  I'm really excited for her first guest post here! 

For the record my first marriage lasted just shy of four years.  Although my first husband was much older than I, it was still quite a shock when he passed away suddenly.  I had experienced the death of older family members growing up, but I had never experienced the death of someone so close, someone that I loved.  Even though I loved my first husband, our marriage, even in its short span, was not in any way ideal.  There were problems and hurts and many things that in retrospect I wish I could have done differently.

Enter Tom.  He had been patiently and carefully waiting for a wife for decades.  God brought us   I was thrilled at what I viewed as a second chance for my dreams of marriage and a family, a dream that I believed had died along with my first husband.  I was determined to do things differently this time around.

together after He brought me through the grieving process and straightened me out a bit.

So, what did I learn from my experience?

1) Gratitude

I am so thankful to God for Tom, and I'm not afraid to tell Tom that to his face frequently.  It's not just about being grateful for the things he does, although I am thankful for that as well.  But it's being grateful for the person he is, the husband, the friend, the lover, the father.  It's being grateful for him choosing to share his entire life and person with the likes of me.  And when it comes to some of the annoyances of sharing space with another person--I am talking about things like snoring, leaving the toilet seat up, putting things away in the wrong place, etc.--all I have to do is take a moment to imagine what life would be without them.  Trust me, if you haven't lost anyone close to you, it is the little things like this that you would give anything to experience just one more time if it meant that they were still alive.  When I remember this, the annoying things aren't so annoying anymore.

2)  Humility

I suffered from a gross sense of self-importance in my first marriage, and it led to a lot of unnecessary heartache.  I am well aware now that I have a lot to learn, that I am very much in need of the grace of God, and that I don't deserve such a wonderful man as my husband.  Humility, while not easy to learn, has some great benefits.  I am much quicker than a I used to be at recognizing when I'm wrong and saying, "I'm sorry."  Humility has also given me the chance to learn a lot from my husband.  He is a great organizer and has many wonderful ideas about how to run the house, and I would miss out on knowing these if I insisted that I knew everything there was to know about such things and that everything must be done MY way.

3)  Never take one moment for granted

This is probably the biggest lesson I have learned from my experience.  I hope that Tom and I have many years together as husband and wife, but I know that neither of us is guaranteed any moment beyond the present one.  It is so easy to get caught up in the whirlwind of life and in the mundane things we have to do every day that it can be hard to stop and appreciate what is right in front of us.  There will always be an abundance of laundry, dishes, meetings, cleaning, and other work that needs to be done.  But my family may not always be there.  I see news stories every day that remind me of that possibility.  I have become more purposeful about letting my husband know every day how much I love him and what he means to me.  I will get in my husband's way as he is working in order to give him a hug and kiss and tell him that I love him.  I write him notes and cards and leave them where he can discover them.  I will not rush off to do the dishes or finish the laundry or work on a project when we have a moment to just cuddle and enjoy one another's company.  These are just a few examples of how I try to cherish the time that I have been given with my husband.

There are many other things that I think make my second marriage much richer, but on reflection I think those things can be traced back to one of these three areas.  I believe that anyone who practices these in their own marriage will also have a rich experience and enjoy many of the blessings that marriage has to offer.