This has been an enlightening experience for us. We've had to work together a lot more on things - filling out paperwork, getting loan payments into place, putting together mission-orientated handouts, and eventually going through our support raising classes and actually doing the support raising. To say Josh and I are independent people is an understatement. And it's not that we only look out for oneself, but that we just doing things in our own way in our own time apart from each other typically. We are very alike in this manner. You know, the student in the group who does everything for everyone else to make sure it gets done right and on time - that is us.
This last November, God really began to stretch us in this process. We went to "A Weekend to Remember" by FamilyLife Ministries. This is a marriage retreat for newlyweds, not-so-newlyweds, those on the brink of divorce, have been divorced, and even those just engaged. God used this weekend to open our eyes to our faults within our marriage, those things that we keep to our self instead of sharing and working together on. On Saturday of that week, we had a date night as our evening activity. We couldn't decide what to do. He wanted to do the "usual" - movie, dinner, bookstore, yada yada. I wanted something different. So we drove around and it started to get dark and become later. Soon we found ourselves in downtown St. Louis looking for a restaurant. I called my dad to get some idea of where to go and he suggested Washington Street. We spent over an hour circling the blocks trying to find parking and deciding which restaurant looked the best. We finally found a spot, parked and began to walk. I had thought that we would go home first to change so I was in jeans and a long-sleeve t-shirt, Josh was a little more well dressed, you know that office casual look. Well we had to walk a few blocks before getting to the Dueling Piano Bar we thought we'd try out. That was a bust - no seating until 9-10ish if we were lucky - it was before 7 and we were hungry! So we walked some more and happened upon Mosaic. We walked in and as we were seated, we realized just how out of place we were. This was a Tapas restaurant - now I did not know this before eating here but a tapas is a plate prepared of just a small portion. If you've ever seen Top Chef or a show like that, the plates the judges eat from is a tapas plate. So we realized that this meant we'd be sharing our food - not something we're good at doing in general, let alone with food. It was such an interesting and wonderful experience and it showed us that we could be civilized with our food :)
We can see God slowly pulling back our layers of selfishness as we continue on in this process. I feel one of the main reasons is because throughout this time we will be relying on each other very much. Once we get down there, all we will have is each other anyways.
