This summer we will celebrate our ten year anniversary.
Marriage...what a beautiful thing.
And yet, I know as I say it is beautiful, my heart also knows the depth of its pain -- in my own marriage, in my friends' marriages. It is not a light thing for me to say that marriage is beautiful.
I say it with commitment -- commitment to serve, to love, to forgive till death parts us, during sickness and health, during riches and poverty, during good times and bad.
But I am so grateful and so blessed to share this journey with my best friend.
My husband was sitting on the couch in the next room playing the guitar when I first began to write. His words are pretty rough at this point. This song will probably never make it past the fiddling around stage, but here's a little of what I am hearing...
In this moment it feels like everything will come crashing down,
In this moment it feels like we have nothing,
And it's not easy, we can't take anymore.
But it's not easy, just to walk out that door.
Cuz we've got something, something special.
We've got something we don't see every day...
He always says he can come up with a tune, but never the right words. Perhaps he is right. Still I like how he tries to communicate that even when marriage is hard, quitting would be more painful. How can we turn our backs on years of memories and life shared together, on our children, on our God?
But it hurts. Right now I hurt for my friends. How can people keep enduring such pain?
People say that I am still wearing my "rose-tinted" glasses. Perhaps we need to be.
Yes, marriage is beautiful. It was always meant to be beautiful.
Our pastor did a series on marriage once and he told about this study he'd read about. I've never forgotten it. They did this survey of people who had been married for at least ten years and were still very happy in marriage. And they were surprised at what they found. There was one common factor among these happy couples. Each person in the marriage viewed their partner better than their partner viewed their own self. (So you would view Eric better than he views himself.)
ReplyDeleteSo keep your rose colored glasses on. According to this study it really IS the key to a happy marriage. (And I personally think it's true)