My last blog post was written by someone else.  Hopeful and naïve, she was right and wrong about what was to come. Tony wouldn’t marry the woman I was a year ago, holding tight to flawed perceptions.

So, how did I get him to marry me? 

It’s not a rhetorical question, I promise, because though I’ve been absent from Writer’s Growth, I haven’t been absent growth or writing.  Outside of the classroom, I found something new and exquisite to study and master: me. 

For two decades, I was a masterful educator.  I took command of 120 little humans for nine months at a time and focused my energy on their forward growth.  I convinced them that their minds weren’t fixed, gave them tools and guidance to use them, and students made gains in my class.  I staked my reputation on my ability to give students a good relationship with reading and writing. 

And for nine months of the year, I felt pretty good about who I was.  The raging sea of relationships gone wrong was at my back.  Before me were hundreds of kids who liked coming to my classroom. More people liked me than rejected me.  The math was sound. The logic? Non sequitur.

The other three months are summer.  Let’s face it.  You can overlook anything in life with your toes in the sand watching dolphins in the bay at Fort Monroe beach. 

Tony met me at the end of last summer, comically committed to landing a husband by my forty-first birthday.  Initially he was wrapped up in the joy of me, wondering how I was still on the market.  With time, he logged sufficient data to conclude.  “Oh, that’s why.”

Fortunately for me, I met a man who was willing to endure my defensive retorts and tell me what was wrong in me that kept me from fostering healthy relationships.  And he was also willing to watch, wait, and see if I could recognize shortcomings that haven’t been working for the first forty years of my life… and then do something about them. 

There’s a potential combination of six secrets from my sabbatical that led Tony to pop the question and me to make it down the aisle this time.  For the next six weeks, I’ll publish one secret at a time, and fully answer the question: How did I get him to marry me? 

If you’re a strong believer that no one can change, skip this series, because that growth mindset I touted to my students powered the transformative journey that made me someone’s partner.  We’re going to talk about a willingness to change and a shift in perspective.  We’re going to learn to apologize well, rethink perfection, and target codependent pitfalls. 

From letting things go to taming a temper, I’ll show you that the most practical path to land yourself a Tony is loving the one person God gave you to love from birth to death: fearfully and wonderfully made you.

Do relationships gone sideways ever make you wonder what you or a loved one might be doing wrong?  Join me the next six weeks as I convince you your mind isn’t fix, give you tools and guidance, and don’t doubt you won’t grow with me.  I’d stake my marriage on the words of wisdom to come.

Enjoy this post? Give it a *Like* and share. Participate in this week’s poll: Do you believe it’s possible for a person to change a core character trait?

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