When You Say I Do

I read this on Facebook just the other day, “Marriage…easiest thing I’ve ever done. We rock it every day”. This young woman has been married a year and a half. I think it is a blessing that one who married so young (she was 20) is experiencing such a wedded bliss. I pray it continues for them…even when life happens.

Another story I recently heard is of a couple who were married for twenty-seven years. They are divorced now. A Christian couple, the man is a minister, in fact, and they not only claim to be happier than they have ever been, but they are close friends. The woman is engaged to her high school sweetheart, and the ex spends time with them and will attend their wedding. Granted this divorced couple have children together, however, they are grown so no real need to see each other often, and yet they do. They choose to.

I could on and on actually, about the many marriages I observe, and the ones that I am privileged to know about firsthand because the wife has chosen to confide in me.

I won’t at this point, but I am left to ponder and question what makes it work and not work? What makes marriage easy for some, and so very difficult for others?

I once heard a counselor say it was unreasonable to think that every marriage can work. I get that. But why? The “I just don’t love him/her anymore” is lame in my mind. I do question, on the other hand, if they every truly loved each other at all. To think that so many couples spend so much time trying to make a marriage work, truly trying, and never really getting the relationship they want and are capable of having, leaves me utterly sad for the couple.

We are all familiar with 1 Corinthians 13:4-8…the love chapter in the Bible. It says, “Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth, bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails…”

I was thinking about those words a few weeks ago. I always took them to be a teaching of how we, as Christians should act, respond, walk in love with those we are in a relationship with and all of mankind. It hit me, though, that perhaps instead of showing how we ought to behave and respond, it is more of an evidence that love is there, that love exist for someone, especially someone you are contemplating marriage to. It put a different spin on it for me.

If you truly love someone, maybe those things will simply flow.

Elementary for some, I’m sure, but it gave me pause as I ponder the marriage mystery.