Little is much when God is in it...

Marriage.

If you didn't hear the infamous line from the Princess Bride in your head when you read that word, we can't be friends.

The hardest guttural laughs I have ever had in my life have been while married. Let's talk about some, shall we?

An absolute favorite memory of mine was the file cabinet. Jeremey had been wanting a nice, pristine file cabinet for so long to file his nerdy things. We had been shopping for some in store and on-line, but guess what? Apparently they line file cabinets with gold and precious stones, because they are as expensive as all get out these days.

So our go-to? Everyone's go-to: the "For Sale" sites on-line. We were checking Facebook and Craigslist everyday to fulfill his filing joy, hoping that we could come across something that didn't lead us to the dungeon of a serial killer.

Behold, our prayers were answered. A gentleman just a few miles away was selling a "like-new" file cabinet FOR JUST $10. We scrolled through the pictures depicting this curvaceous cabinet that met the hopes and dreams of my organized husband. Why this man was tossing this puppy for ten bucks, I didn't know, nor did I care, all I knew is that we were saving money, which meant we could afford to get the 80/20 ground beef at Aldi this week instead of the lower middle class 70/30. (This is a joke, please don't e-mail me about this, I won't respond.)

So we made a date of it. We would pick up our metallic beast on a breezy Tuesday night, and celebrate our Craigslist treasure with a drive-thru at a blessed Dairy Queen. Thank the Lord again for His gracious gift to our precious family.

We pulled in the driveway of this stranger's beautiful home. "Do you need help, babe?" I asked, like the adoring wife I am. "No, I bet he'll help me carry it to the car, you just wait here." How exciting! I waited a few minutes for my dear husband to join me back in our Equinox, with our soon-to-be own cabinet of the filing kind.

A few minutes passed.

I noted a shadow emerging forth out of the garage. The first feature I saw was of despair and disappointment, as Jeremey came forth holding a small, miniature filing cabinet. It was beautiful, it was like-new, but it was sooooooo compact.

I tried to hold back my loud, obnoxious guffaws, but as Jeremey opened the passenger door, because we CERTAINLY no longer needed the entire trunk for this tiny, tiny filing cabinet, I cried out in screeches of laughter, with tears streaming down my cheeks. "Don't-" Jeremey said as he opened his car door and slid inside. "Why...did you..." I tried to blurt out through my cackles, "pay...for this..."  "BECAUSE I WAS TOO EMBARRASSED TO TELL HIM THAT HIS DISHONEST PHOTOGRAPHY MADE THIS LOOK LIKE A NORMAL-SIZED FILING CABINET, BABE. THIS IS FOR INDEX CARDS!"

That was the best night ever. That filing cabinet is still in our garage. It's empty, as we haven't found anything small enough to file in it.

I love that memory. Don't mention it to my husband, he doesn't love it as much.

A few weeks ago, Jeremey burst through the door of our home. "Babe, babe, babe......TAKE A LOOK AT THIS." Jeremey had a new-found love for copper kitchen items, and had been eyeing a few sets of copper pans to add to our home collection for a while now, but again, being the Goodwill psychopath that I am, was trying to find what I like to call, "a real steal of a deal."

There, in the light of his iPhone, lay a set of gorgeous copper pans on a daily deal site-

-everything he had been hoping for, at his fingertips, for the low, low price of just $30. "Shall we get them? We can replace all of our pans once they come with these beauties." Sure! Why not? That's amazing, and I'm a woman who knows her place, so new kitchen equipment is always welcome. (This is a joke, please don't e-mail me about it, I won't respond.)

A few days later, it came. Jeremey walked in the door with the package of copper prizes. The box seemed a little small, but with advanced shipping technologies these days, you just never know.

We opened the box, and behold, itsy bitsy teeny tiny copper pans emerged from their indwelling cardboard cave. I gotta admit, they were beautiful, and if we ate portions small enough to feed a family of ants, they would have been absolute perfection.

I tried.

I did.

I swallowed it back.

But it still came out.

"Do you still want to replace all of the pans in our house with these? As well as.....OUR FILE CABINET?!?!"

Don't laugh that hard after giving birth. You may experience an incontinence episode.

I love that memory.

Don't mention it to Jeremey, he doesn't love it as much.

Our expectations really got the best of us during those moments. We were expecting something to complete some of our heartfelt desires, only to be disappointed by the fact that they fell very, very short. Literally.

This happens so often in my own life. In marriage, motherhood, friendships- having too-good-to-be-true expectations that often can't be met, or are nearly impossible for other people to meet, and being disappointed almost every time. Why do we do this to ourselves? We are so busy imagining the perfect life, the perfect job, the perfect family, the perfect EVERYTHING- we forget that we are involved in the equation- you don't get what you want or what you imagine in your head- YOU GET WHAT YOU CHOOSE.

Choose joy, choose fulfillment- laugh at the disappointments, they become memories later.