If you are married, think back on your wedding day. Would you do it all over again? The odds seem so stacked against us, don’t they? Every year many more divorces occur than marriages. More people today are living together and not marrying. And shockingly, more couples are choosing to divorce before they celebrate their first anniversary than ever before.
We live in this world that gives us more good reasons to not marry than to marry. Unmarried people witness the struggles married people face, like porn and affairs and all the other things that stack up against marriage, and often conclude that avoiding marriage is their best option. It seems that many people have just thrown marriage under the bus.
Yet I talk to people everyday who still hold on to the dream that marriage is for them. Maybe some of them are idealistic, but they live for their dream to come true.
Today I am amazed to see more couples in the counseling room than ever before where one or both have had an affair or participated in some type of infidelity. That may not surprise you, but I think this will: I see more and more people willing to fight for their affair-scarred marriages than ever before. Maybe they understand that affairs don’t fulfill the promises that they make. Maybe they are aware that less than 1% of marriages that start out of an affair make it. Maybe they figured out that what they had was a lot better than what they were pursuing. Maybe.
So, would I get married again? I know you are thinking: He has to say yes; after all, he is a Christian marriage counselor. If I am going to have any credibility with you at all, I have to be honest. So my answer is yes not because it is the “right” thing for me to say, but because from the depths of my heart, I love being married to Nancy. She has been my constant companion since she was eighteen. We kind of grew up together. We had to figure things out. We brought our baggage into our marriage that we should have checked long before we did. We had to learn new ways to connect and to stay connected and how to fight together instead of fighting each other. We had to balance life so it did not overwhelm us. And sex, that was a whole other battle. But do you know what really made the difference? Do you know what really helped me be able to say I would do this marriage thing all over again? We had to make the choice to put God in our marriage not on the outside or a little bit inside, but all the way in. God had to be number one.
You see, what we learned was that we didn’t need to have all the answers, because God did. That doesn’t mean that our life has been perfect, because it hasn’t. What it does mean is that we discovered that God loved us and valued our marriage more than we could have ever imagined. He created it. He designed it, and He had this perfect plan for our marriage. He also has a perfect plan for yours. So what do you do? What is your job? Follow Him. Follow Him as individuals, and follow Him as a couple.
In this series, we’re going to look at how to do just that. We’ll look at seven secrets that can dramatically change your marriage. Then it will be your choice. What will you do with them?
