There you are, standing up in front of all of your friends and family. You follow the woman that you love coming down the aisle where she comes to see you and stand with the pastor. You say your vows… Love… honour… cherish… rich or poor… sick or health… as long as you both shall live.
Whoosh!
Now let’s travel ten years later. You wake up with this person beside you and you wonder who they are. It’s your spouse, but it seems like they are such a different person than they used to be. Is this the person that I said I would spend the rest of my life with? I don’t want to be here right now.
How did you get to this point? So many things act on people over the years. So many people come across our path. So many forces act on us and change who we are and what we grow into. I have to admit that even in my marriage it is tough at times. I don’t know how my wife puts up with me!
We tend to get into the marriage with a couple of assumptions. Men tend to think that things won’t change. They like things this way and when they change, they tend to resist them. Women tend to see a marriage as a project, something to start with right here, and then make better.
Life happens though. How did I end up with what seems to be 37 kids? What happened to the woman that always looked hot? When did she decide that sleep pants and sweatshirts were her uniform?
At my wedding, the pastor that married me, (only half) joking said, “Love is blind, but marriage is a real eye-opener.” I laughed on the day, but I now know how true that is. Change is good for any healthy for any relationship, but some change brings strife with it.
What happens when you start out being a couple that has a common set of values? What happens when one of you changes to a different set of values? What happens when an illness comes in, and the person that is ill has problems dealing with it, and begins to be abusive? What if the issues modelled by a spouses parents spills into your marriage? How do you deal with it?
What if over time, the spark is gone and you have no idea how to find it again? I hear this one often… sometimes I have seen it in my marriage. Kids, jobs, housework, insert your issue here. Too often lots of life stuff happens and spouses forget to be spouses.
As a young man, my dad told me that being married was hard. I believed him then, and now I say the same thing. There are so many shifts and changes that you couldn’t possibly anticipate. How we deal with those changes will either make our marriage stronger, or weaker.
Looking at just the idea that loving someone comes down to choosing to love them, and is not about the “fuzzy feeling” is huge in marriage. Loving your spouse is easy some days, but loving them other days is tough. How hard is it to choose to be patient and kind to a person that just tore a strip off you in an argument?
With all of the shifts, it looks like it all comes down to values/preferences and convictions. We live in a culture that allows people to choose everything… what channels do you want?... what cell features do you want?... custom sandwiches…. Custom paint jobs…. Custom clothes…. Whatever. Marriage is different though. Marriage is cemented together by God. People forget that. It is meant to be together for life. Unfortunately, people give up on their spouse. They walk away and don’t look back. Rather than getting them help, or considering their kids, or getting some space to work out their differences, they just walk away.
My pastor is a supporter of that idea…. If there are huge problems in a marriage, sometimes people need to get apart to come back together well and restored. Even this is taken by people and ran with. They see a bit of freedom and forget their focus of the marriage.
Marriage is sacred. Work through it all. Just recently someone posted a status that said something like “A strong marriage is made up of two forgivers”. It is SO true. Unforgiveness is like taking poison and expecting your enemy to die. We have to forgive and forgive and forgive and forgive…
Or what about this idea? Pride will kill your marriage too. If you are too proud to admit when you are wrong, you will kill your marriage. A movie that I watched several years ago was about this couple that was really struggling to make their marriage work. They had the kids, the jobs and the house, but they fought all the time. It looked like they were going to split. As the marriage weakened, their eyes wandered. No one cheated, but they weighed out their life and in the end it was that they realized that there was so much hurt that no one was willing to say that they were sorry. They were more focused on lashing out and hurting each other, and being right.
Protect your marriage with everything in you. Work with your spouse to make the gear shifts that happen in life, and remember the hot person that caught your eye in the first place. Love them where they are at, and pray for them… daily.
