Attempting to Talk About Marriage and Love

Megan and me on our wedding day

Single, never married people usually tend to not realize what marriage entails. Before I was married, I only knew shallow love: the kind you develop when you are at first strongly attracted to a person because of their physical appeal and desirable traits and attributes. I'm not saying this kind of love is bad; it's just love that's less-than-knee-deep. In order to discover deeper love, you must grow and stretch WITH your spouse. You are only swimming in the deep waters of love when each of you REALLY knows the other and love each other, warts and all. You love them regardless of their shortcomings and deficiencies. You share in their sadness and rejoice in their victories. Like the Bible says, marriage is when a man and woman join each other and the two become one. Do you know how hard it is to entwine two lives like this? Marriage is hard work! Don't let anyone fool you about that. But only in a marriage can you discover the best love worth having with another human. I am not trying to denigrate the love between parents and children or between siblings, et cetera. That is important, too. However, God tells us in the Bible that the love in marriage is a model of how Jesus Christ loves the collective church (those who believe in Him).

An engagement picture

I think one reason why it seems marriage is more difficult and commonly terminated in modern western society is because of the way our society wants to confuse gender, gender characteristics and spousal roles. Men and women are different, with distinct characteristics that make us who we are. Why try to blur the lines and make it harder? We humans like to complicate simple things and make them complex. Why? At this point, I've probably lost a few friends and/or blog readers, but I cannot be fake. I must present the truth and my true thoughts on this subject. I hope I do get some credit for that.

Divorces are comparatively easier to get in modern times, and there is the illusion that life is relatively easy after a divorce. Divorce, in almost every instance, will cost copious amounts of money and emotional trauma. If you have been through a divorce, you will likely know what I am talking about better than I do.

Marriage is not all butterflies and rainbows all the time. It is not a casual friendship or romantic fling. A marriage is more like a hard-won alliance. Spouses see each other at their worst and inevitably hurt each other with their words and actions. Responding in love is hard in the face of difficulty, but we must. I have to be honest in saying that marriage is the hardest thing I've had to go through: harder than Marine Corps Recruit Training or getting deployed to Iraq four times. It requires continual, lifelong work. Both husband and wife must love each other unconditionally and make daily love deposits into their marriage.

Another Engagement Picture

These days, it is quite an accomplishment to be married "til' death do us part." Most people throw in the towel and say "I can't do this any more!" They think that someone new can fulfill all their wants and needs and so jump into another marriage with someone different, only to realize that their new spouse has many of the same issues as their former. Of course the grass is always greener on the other side (not really). If you depend on someone else to meet all your wants and needs and be your all in all, you're not living in reality. You will be disappointed every time in that person. The only One who can be your all in all is God Almighty. Don't try to suck the life out of your spouse. Give more to your relationship than you expect to get back.

It's much easier for me to write about marriage in a blog than it is to be married. None of us are experts on marriage, but some of us are wiser than others. I wouldn't ask a divorced person for marital advice, though, because I'm still married! I admit freely that I am not the perfect husband; I have bad habits and say mean things sometimes. Often, I am selfish and unkind. If you're honest, you would say the same thing about yourself, too. Even though I am flawed, my wife still loves me...and I love her. I KNOW her, and she knows me.

Our wedding ceremony

I want to leave you to think about the words of 1 Corinthians Chapter 13, also known as "The Love Chapter":

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes and always perseveres. Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, as I am fully known. And now, these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

New International Version of the Bible. 1973. Biblica, Grand Rapids, MI.