A few thoughts about marriage I’ll ramble on about if you feel like reading…

“Doing nothing is doing something.” That was the headline of a little paragraph I read earlier that went on to talk about how careless we become with our marriages over time, and how lack of effort to show our spouse affection, etc. is not just NOT doing it, it’s DOING something- damaging and eroding our relationship. While I still feel that Andrew and I are at the beginning of our married life (it will be six years next summer and I can honestly say that some days I still think to myself, ‘I can’t believe I got the man of my dreams!’) I definately see, especially after having Jude, how the effort we make when dating and first married fades easily if we let it. I think of how meaningful even the smallest romantic gestures from Andrew are to me, and how his eyes lit up the last time I planned a special night for the two of us. But life gets in the way and those gestures and moments seem to be fleeting. So the challenge is- how do we keep motivated to effectively work at and maintain the closeness we desire in our marriage? Like anything that is worth it- we set our hearts to the hard work of commitment in between the romance. We choose not to base our actions toward our spouse on a daily basis by how we feel that morning but by the very fact that they are there… worthy of our love and respect. We love them when we feel like it, and when we don’t we put aside Self and love them anyway. We choose to work toward our marriage and communicate well and often, in between work, loving and raising Jude, and everything else on our plates, instead of waiting until later on when lack of effort towards our marriage has made us distant. We face our issues head on in soul-bearing honesty and loving communication. Even when it means putting aside our pride or feeling silly about bringing up something we thought we had already worked out. We put the other first. Not everyone can relate or agree with this but we personally also believe that we have to find our ultimate fulfillment in our creator, since not even a husband or wife can truly be our end-all fulfillment in life. God is our first love, and when we are both pursuing Him we are on the same path. Our priorities for God, then each other and then our children, ministry, work, etc. dictate how we spend our time and what we choose to pursue first.
I realize that not everyone is married to someone who they feel is the ‘person of their dreams’. I also realize that in some marriages one person is willing to make the effort and the other isn’t, and for that there is no easy solution. I wish I knew the answer but I do know that love is worth fighting for through thick and thin, and that most often actions speak louder than words.

I’ll have to go back and read this in 30 years to see how we’ve done and if this has led to the marriage we desire… but for now I’ll hope that it does and keep on loving my man the way I know he deserves.
What a blessing to be called his wife.