The truth about long marriages

This post could also be entitled

"How to stay married when you are both sinners saved by grace"

We have been married for 34 years.  We have known each other for 39 years.

It's a long time!

We just passed our anniversary a week ago.  On social media I posted a picture of us with the title
"neither one has gone missing yet"   My husband shared the picture and wrote "another happy year of marriage".

.......neither one of these comments were portraying the truth about our marriage.   That bothers me.  I read too many blogs, and too many social media posts that set the bar far too high.  If only you follow these 5 easy steps, then you too can have the marriage of your dreams!  Ha!

So many marriages don't make it.  I think they don't make it for a variety of reasons.  I will address at least two here.

1.  God is not the center.  Now I'm not even going to pretend that I'm speaking to the entire population here.  As a Christian, I'm going to speak as a Christian.  If you don't acknowledge the fact that God owns your marriage, that what He wants and desires from us is supreme over what we want, then you are doomed to fail.

2.  Selfishness.  If one or the other has a selfish streak, then there is bound to be trouble.  If both have one, then you are doomed to fail.

I can only speak for myself.  I want to be honest because I think that there are a ton and a half of people that need to hear this message.  Marriage is hard.  Marriage is not all fun and games.  Marriage has a purpose.  My opinion is that if you are in a marriage that is over the top happy, happy, joy, joy, all of the time........then you are hiding something.  yes!  You are!  You have settled and you don't feel passionately about your life.

I love my husband and he loves me.  We struggle, a lot!  We are both sinners, saved by grace.  We are trying to live out our lives according to God's will, not our own.  We have a good life and if we had to weigh it out on a set of scales, the happy would win.  But there would still be an abundance of sad.
We will be learning how to make this work until the day we die.  We know that and we accept the challenge.

Having the love of Jesus in our hearts does not shield us from marriage troubles.  But it does help keep us centered when all around us it's storming.  I heard a song this morning; Let it Rain and the words said "just because it's pouring down doesn't mean we're gonna drown...let it rain"  Sometimes you have to fight and cry and pray your way through the stormy stuff.  Wait it out.  Another song line I heard says "a bitter heart turns the love we made to ashes"

We aren't perfect and our marriage is not perfect (far from it)  But God is perfect and God trusted us with the relationship, this family, this life.  God knows best and we won't question Him.

Each day is a new chance to try harder.  Yeah, I used to believe that.

It's better to believe that each moment is a new chance to try harder.

Put God first and your spouse second.  That's the only advice I can give.