the newlywed game

Last night we went to a dinner for newlywed couples from our church. I helped organize it and another couple with an apartment larger than ours graciously offered to host. It was fun - I didn't realize until the end of the evening that each of the couples there didn't know each other - just me and our pastor and his wife who also attended. Ezer's right - I do like bringing people together. I don't do it as often anymore post-marriage but sometimes I do miss jointly thrown dinner parties and other functions. I think I'll be coordinating the Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (people sign up and don't know who they're eating with until they show up at a given address) event for our church this fall again though.

I was also once known as icebreaker queen. This time I had each couple talk about 4 things: introduction of themselves, something they're thankful for about their marriage, something that's been a challenge in their marriage, and any comments/questions for the pastor or the rest of us. It felt like there were many more similarities than differences, and I appreciated that people were pretty open considering they'd just met. Overall, I don't feel like marriage has changed my friendships with my single friends a lot, but I do think there's a place in life both for people who are similar to you in some way and also for people who are different. I don't have many married friends in New York (capital of single people!) so it was nice to connect in that way.

So...what did we share? Ezer shared that though he's found this first year to be difficult, that marriage by nature is difficult, he's thankful to be married to me. He's found it challenging to daily try to die to himself. I shared that I was thankful that neither of us can stand feeling distant from each other very long, which motivates us to work things out. I feel like figuring out how to live with our personality differences has been a challenge - which does relate to the whole dying to self thing. Ezer also mentioned that he thinks it would be good to talk about issues surrounding sex in more depth during pre-marital counseling...communication, dealing with the past, expectations, etc.

Our peach brie quesadillas with honey-lime dipping saucer were a hit (thanks, Cooking Light!). I've been on a cooking kick this week - made a chicken biriyani and a challah bread pudding. Ezer doesn't really eat sweets, so if anybody wants to help me finish the bread pudding...