How long do you expect to be married?  Seriously, how many years do you think you’ll be one with your mate?  My parents are married for 62 years and my in-laws are married for 73 years.  Perhaps it’s good, at times, to consider the other end of a marriage relationship rather than just looking at today.  What is it that you want the last years of your relationship to look like because, honestly, you are working toward that moment right now, today. What do you desire your marriage testimony to say, “It was rough and rocky, but we stuck it out?”  Or, how about what my wife recently observed while sitting with her parents at the doctor’s office?

Harold, my father-in-law, pushed his bride, Betty, into the exam room via a wheel chair and then he shuffled slowly to his seat directly across the room from her.  Mary, my wife, was seated between the two of them where she could witness what would happen next.  In the silence of this waiting period, Mary caught her mother and father looking into one another’s eyes  and then her mother began to move her lips in total silence and mouthed these words to her lifelong partner, “I love you.”  Harold, with a twinkle in his eye, immediately mouthed those same words back.  That’s it; that was the total conversation before the doctor arrived on the scene.  A brief moment caught in time reveled two hearts who will finish the journey of marriage and their marriage testimony amazingly well.