It is Thursday, also known as "Married Life Thursday". Time to talk about marriage: the good, the bad and the.....wait for it.....UGLY! Today I might just ramble a bit, maybe rant a tad and maybe cry a little. The truth is I love being married, even when that man just drives me nuts and I have to admit the possibility that he is from another planet and not capable of understanding Earths language. I still love it and at the end of the day, would rather forgive and at least try to forget, agree to disagree....ish or whatever and just go on playing house and being in love.
Ten years ago we wed. It has been an adventure.
Life is, or seems to be, filled with complexity.
Marriage is…..let’s
just say…. complicated. You have two widely different people with a past, with an
abundance of emotion, and with baggage still carried around from that past.
Then you add kids, pets, in-laws, bills, work, stress, car trouble, health challenges,
fatigue, bad weather, irritating behavior, not enough money, too much money (does anyone ever have that problem), home repairs, external drama, difference of opinion, habits (just to name a few), and the difficulties seem insurmountable.
It is important to bring marriage back to a
simple remembrance of your beginning: “I love you; I am committed to you.” The
uncomplicated reality of two people sharing a moment that is full of
possibilities.
Chris and I have had circumstances in our
lives together that have stripped us of every complicating trivial stress by
making us see the comparison between the things we spent time worrying about
and what was truly important.
At the time our son Mason was born we had
been experiencing a very stressful financial time; Mason, in his first four
months, gave us a perspective shift like none we had ever known or probably
will ever know. We realized in those months that we either stood together and
fought for our son side by side or risked losing him and everything by taking
our anxiety out on each other. Everything but Gods goodness, Mason’s life and
our family became insignificant and faded into the background. Chris and I have truly become a
team, fighting on the same side, experiencing victories together and clinging to what is, rightly, important.
For such incredibly evolved beings, so we think, with
practically limitless resources, the ability to get as much "higher education" as
we want and just fry the brain with knowledge, the capability of reading any
book we want and absorb and grow our grey matter to these souped up genetically
modified intellects, we certainly have a problem. With a goal in mind, human nature has the capacity to
demand that the body submit to a rigorous training, such as running marathons,
bike riding, weight lifting and the like. We want growth and development; we don’t want to stagnate. Yet, marriage, the ultimate opportunity to develop in sacrifice and learn intense self-control, to demand of the body and soul more than is otherwise required, has a 50% success rate. This should not be.
He gave us what our human make up required; God gave
us marriage as our development; the opportunity to war against the impulses
that threaten to make us selfish, to be able to see our propensities and in the
light of another’s need, to push our
inclinations aside for the person we love.
A good marriage has to be purchased; it comes with a price. Most people are aware of the price before they wed but they are so "in love", it seems cheap. Even the vows cover the indefinable possibilities “for better or worse, richer or poorer....” etc. It seems like people look at the price tag after being married awhile and then start to barter: “I will give you this much”.
It is really a non negotiable price; fixed rate, PITI, for as long as you both shall live. Society puts value on all manner of things, the big two are education and making money (not unimportant things) but God puts tremendous value on this covenant called marriage. We need to let what we say, how we say it and how we act reflect that we put value on what God puts value on.
Marriage is the opportunity to do a thousand small and
really quite painless things for someone else; to be your best self when you are tempted to be your worst.
“He has the power to render
us happy or unhappy; to make our service light or burdensome; a pleasure or a
toil. Say that his power lies in words and looks; in things so slight and
insignificant that it is impossible to add and count 'em up: what then? The
happiness he gives, is quite as great as if it cost a fortune.”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol
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