Journalist and author Mignon McLaughlin once said, “A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person.”
After dating for over three years, Mary and I finally were able to marry. She completed her nursing degree and I was going into my final year of military service. Our long-distance relationship of me living in southern Virginia and Mary living in Pennsylvania would come to a welcomed end. We would stop saying goodbye for months at a time and end going to pay phones with pockets full of coins…finally.
We were newlyweds feeling as though we were playing house. Everything was new: living together, sleeping together, eating most meals together and hanging out 24/7 together. After an amazing two-week-long honeymoon, we settled into our new apartment in Newport News, Virginia, six hours from any family. It was glorious, fun, exciting, new and in our minds, permanent.
Yes, we were young and we were inexperienced. We had no track record of marriage for ourselves, no experienced sexual lives, no marriage mentors or counselors, but we made it. We prayed. We found an awesome church home that became family. We volunteered in ministry together. We played together and we reached out in love to our neighbors together. We grew in our relationship day by day, paying our bills, attempting to fill our apartment with furniture, communicating about everything and finding agreement in as many areas as possible.
We rarely had a disagreement because neither of us was disagreeable, rather we were happy, elated really. We were in love. Discovering the one you want to spend the rest of your life with, finding the one that captures your heart, well, it was remarkable.
That was 44 and a half years ago. What has changed and how are we different concerning all of the above? We’re gray haired. (At least I think my wife has gray hair?) We’re slower; more intentional. We’re dealing with arthritis. We’re grandparents. We don’t hear as well. We have annual physicals in which the doctor asks us questions we never thought we’d be asked. But then again, we love doing the same things and have such similar thoughts from long-term agreement and communication. We’re best friends and we accept our differences as marital strengths. We love growing older together, still holding hands, still kissing and still saying “I love you” each and every day.
It’s good, really good and we truly give God thanks for one another. One of the keys to all of this is as quoted above – we just keep falling in love over and over with the same person!
So often marriage is like a mirror and we get to see our real self through the reflections of our life mate. After all, who knows you better than your spouse? Who better to reflect back to you the image you are projecting?
When the city fathers of New York thought about the future growth of their city, they laid out the streets and numbered them from the center outward. In the beginning there were only six streets in their planning maps, so they decided to go crazy and project growth.
How about you; do you sell your vision short? How far can you see? How far do you desire to see and project? God has vision for you and through you. Dream with Him!
I recently read a Reader’s Digest article called, The Nature Cure and was totally intrigued. I will share some of the information from that article below. It seemed to verify what I have believed and incorporated into my life, certainly appreciating that this periodical would help to validate this belief.
Did you know pediatricians are now telling parents with young families to regularly visit parks so the whole family can de-stress and play? When is the last time you went camping, hiking in the mountains, visited gardens, introduced your child to the wonders of a stick, sat around a campfire, watched a sunset, played in a creek, observed butterflies or sat by a lake?
Someone once shared with me these words, “I’ll respect him when he starts respecting me.” Still another said, “When she starts acting respectable, I’ll show her respect.” Really? Since when is respect conditional upon another respecting you?
I love how author Gary Thomas weighs in on this very subject, “As our partners and their weaknesses become more familiar to us, respect often becomes harder to give. But this failure to show respect is more a sign of spiritual immaturity than it is an inevitable pathway of marriage.” He also notes, “When there is mutual respect in marriage, selflessness becomes contagious…. If you want to obsess about them [weaknesses], they’ll grow, but you won’t!”
There are those who attend church on Sunday and live according to anything but those thoughts Monday through Saturday. I can remember as a young teen listening to the minister read the scripture Sunday morning and then close by saying, “Here endeth the word of the Lord for today.” I remember thinking, I’ve got news for you; here endeth the word for the week for me. So, yes, I’ve felt like a fake and I’ve been a fake at times.
Marriage minefields are fields where we have buried or hidden devices (memories) just below the surface. We actually move forward in life by frequently looking backward. Most day-to-day life is not filled with new revelation but memory. Memory helps us to find our way home after work. Memory is used daily in order to live life. Life without the ability to recall even the slightest, most mundane details or important ones would be disastrous.
Some of our memories contain lies or misbeliefs and still others are inaccurate. It was not uncommon for John and Elizabeth (not their real names) to experience knock-down, drag-out arguments. In sheer frustration late one evening, John looked at Elizabeth and said, “That’s it; I’m out of here!” Immediately, Elizabeth went silent and fell to the floor in a fetal position, where she sobbed uncontrollably. Even though John ran immediately to his wife, knelt beside her, and desperately tried to console her, it was as if he had left. Elizabeth didn’t or couldn’t hear his voice or acknowledge his presence. John later discovered that when his wife was six years old, she overheard her parents fighting. Her father’s words rang out as he screamed, “That’s it; I’m out of here!” Elizabeth never saw her father again
Elizabeth was no longer fighting with John; she was wrestling with pain-filled memories planted in a minefield just below the surface. Was it the argument they needed to resolve, or was it Elizabeth’s past hurts that needed to be healed? From many stories like this one, I have come to believe that most relationship issues in the present have a connection to the past; therefore, what seem like marital issues are often individual issues. I am convinced that when Jesus heals our individual issues, sins, hurts, and disappointments, marriage relationship issues can also be healed. *
Many years ago, a wiser, older, more mature couple taught us this phrase: praise in public; construct in private. By that phrase they meant to always provide a word of praise for your mate when with your family, at your work place, with your friends or in any social setting. They also encouraged us to never, ever put our mate down, shame them, humiliate them or correct them in a negative sense in public. We took this counsel to heart and have adapted it for our marriage relationship.
I always loved being a father. While not the easiest job in the world, it was my favorite and most rewarding. Having children to hold, train, read to, discipline, play with and love is a God-given honor. And quite honestly, I made lots of mistakes as a father because there is no perfect earthly father.
Fathering is a call from God and it’s a higher priority than your job, your hobbies, your buddies, your house and mostly…yourself! If you still have children in your home or grandchildren, you have a direct link to build the life of Christ in them (Colossians 1:28). Be the type of father that represents Jesus well and determine to leave a legacy of love, acceptance and approval.
The Bible reveals, “Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor.” (Eccl. 4:9) My marriage has had multiple “good returns” and I am so thankful for them. We’ve had the return of answered prayer together, the return of investment into the lives of others, the return of years of mission work, the return of children and grandchildren, etc. God’s returns just keep on coming.
Steve Prokopchak 