Want your marriage to last a lifetime?
Then forget all the articles and TV programs about what a marriage should be.
No two marriages are alike. How could they be, since no two humans are alike?
Besides, marriage relationships need time to grow, like plants and trees and every other living thing.
We don't start kindergarten and immediately know what we know by the time we've earned our Master's degree. We don't leave our wedding ceremony knowing our partner–or ourselves–as well as we will after years of marriage.
Concentrate on what matters most
As with building a house, it starts with laying the foundation. Builders plan and erect structures to withstand stresses of wind and weather. So they reinforce the foundation, the beams and the roof, all to ensure stability.
We need to do the same with our marriages.
Why not build your marriage on the Rock? My husband and I have been married for years. Each of us already was rooted in Christianity, so we just lived as a couple the same way we lived as singles.
We didn't know how blessed we were. Looking back, we see how our unity of faith strengthened our marriage bond. When we hit those inevitable rough spots we turned to the Lord, together or separately.
Never once did He let us down.
Who can say if we had it in us to stay committed without His strength and our mutual trust in God?
Cut each other some slack
Every one of us knows what we want and what would make us happy. When our marriage partner fails to live up to our ideal picture, we feel cheated. We sigh. We complain. It seldom occurs to us that we're fixated on his faults and blind to our own.
How much better for the marriage if we simply stick with the premise that each of us is doing the best we can.
For example, a frequent complaint of wives is, "We don't communicate!" or "I can't get him to talk to me!
You've done it. I've done it. Way too long into our marriage I understood it's wired into us females to be verbal. Talking makes us feel good. It's as if we don't know what we think until we talk it over with someone. It's as if we have to talk it over before we can make sense of our lives.
That's not how guys think.
There's a good book, fun to read, that lays this out clearly. It's entitled Men Are Like Waffles, Women Are Like Spaghetti, by Bill & Pam Farrel. Their basic concept is that men are able to compartmentalize, to wall off one part of their lives from another and keep them separate. (Waffles.) For women, however, every part of their lives touches every other part. (Spaghetti.)
That concept, as silly as it sounds, can help us understand problem areas in our marriages. (Pam and Bill have appeared on Focus on the Family and have a resource-packed website: http://love.wise.com/index.php)
Wine that ages is more mellow and flavorful. Marriages, too.
Remember these beautiful lines from Robert Browning?
"Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be, the last of life, for which the first was made. Our times are in his hand who saith, 'A whole I planned, youth shows but half; Trust God: See all, nor be afraid!'"
By now my husband and I know the truth of Browning's words. The "best years" truly are worth hanging on for!
Believe it, my friend.
Lovingly,
Lenore
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