The best advice you'll ever get:
For the love of God go to bed angry. No good can come from fighting until dawn or fighting through irrational PMS. Just got to sleep. Wake up, take a shower, and the whole world will look different.
Everything is better after a good night’s sleep and everything is better after a shower. Everything!
Confessing that I haven’t read many books, one of my favorites is “A Million Miles in a Thousand Years” by Donald Miller. I love this quote. “It’s interesting that in the Bible, in the book of Ecclesiastes, the only practical advice given about living a meaningful life is to find a job you like, enjoy your marriage and obey God. It’s as though God is saying write a good story, take somebody with you, and let me help.”
Taking somebody with you. What a beautiful way to describe marriage. I have to admit that when I go to weddings sometimes I look at all of the glam and pageantry and I wonder if this is about the party or the commitment. I’m not saying it can’t be both, it very often is, but sometimes, let’s be honest, can’t you just tell? The wedding day festivities, well that is just the party to celebrate. It’s the first stop. It’s not the destination. Would it be wrong to put on the shower gift card: “Can’t wait for the big day, but make sure you are looking forward to the marriage more than the wedding itself because you are going to be in the marriage much longer than that snazzy suit and beautiful gown. Hugs and kisses, the Stella Family”? - Maybe not. Life can get hard therefore marriage will get hard. You don’t start off good at it. You get good at it during the hard stuff. Maybe you don’t even get good at it – you just get more committed to it.
Marriage is becoming family, it’s being in it for the long haul. It means giving up should never be simply an option on the table when things get rough and trust me things are going to get rough. That for better or worse part, spoiler alert – there will be seasons of worse. The real beauty in marriage is it will then get better and making it through and coming out on the other side together makes the love that much stronger. You are writing a love story. Have you ever read a love story without sad parts, difficult parts, hard parts? It wouldn’t be much of a story, would it?
You can go to the court house and purchase a marriage license for $60 (cash, credit or debit card), pay the Justice of the Peace $20 (cash only) and be married on the spot with an ID and two witnesses during normal business hours. That gets you a legal contract that will cost you a lot more to get out of then it cost you to get in to. If one party breaks the agreement you void the contract. You are free to take your toys and go home. That’s one way to do it, but a family isn’t a legal contract. If the plan is to create a family, don’t confuse the two. If you think it’s just a legal contract, I think the point is being missed. If the plan is to create a family, even if it’s a family of two, you might want to consider a covenant. That’s something completely different. It just is. It’s what I want for my girls, it’s what I want for my nieces and nephews, its what I want marriage to be, to represent. I don’t care if it’s between a man and a woman, a man and a man, a woman and a woman. I’m more focused on the third person in the relationship than what makes up the two. When you make a covenant, when your marriage includes a promise before God, it becomes so much more. It’s a promise to hold up your end of the commitment regardless of whether or not your spouse does. It’s a promise you are making to your heavenly father and he thinks promises are a big deal. The best part is that you are making the covenants together. You’ve got each other’s backs in hard times! Maybe that part should be somehow written into the paperwork you sign when you get the marriage license. Maybe they could have a nice table to sit at with about 20 pens lined up like the president has when he’s signing something super important that can’t be easily undone. The bride and groom could sign again and again giving them more time to think about what they are really signing up for.
Protect your marriage. I’m not sure anything is more important. There is no better insurance policy than surrounding yourself with a community that holds the same values that you hold true. Toxic relationships are not only toxic they are contagious. Bob Goff wrote a story in his best seller, “Love Does” about his hitchhiking days. He said to be careful who you get in the car with because ultimately you are going where they are going. I think that applies to marriage as well as life. If your community of friends’ values marriage as you do they will never jeopardize it. They will celebrate with you in the good times and support you and challenge you to persevere in the bad times. Your marriage will always be stronger if you are surrounded by friends that hold your marriage in high regard. Hang out with people that are going where you want to your marriage to go.
I know there are marriages out there that are made up of simply two people and I’m sure that works for some, but I think that inviting God into that union somehow seals the deal. If over time God is squeezed out of the equation the glue that holds you together is much more susceptible to coming apart. Something like half of marriages in our country end in divorce, but I once heard a crazy statistic that only 1 in 10,000 that pray together will divorce. Wow, right? Now in full disclosure I have to admit that my husband and I are both uncomfortable with praying out loud, but what we do together each week is worship. I’m pretty sure that there isn’t another time together in our week that we aren’t closer than when we are inwardly and outwardly seeking His presence side by side. Sure, you can marry without God, but seeking his presence within your relationship is more powerful than I think I can describe. It creates a bond that is so much harder to break. When God is invited into a relationship you are stronger, separately and together.
There is an understanding that above all else, we are to care for each other on behalf of our heavenly father and that’s really powerful. If I could just remember that every minute of every day, but I don’t. What I do though is remind myself daily to come back to that place. It’s easy to forget that the most important thing in my marriage is not my immediate happiness. That’s kind of our default setting isn’t it? What makes me happy, what do I want in this moment, but remembering to put your spouse first, to remember that you promised to care for them first in the ends puts you in a relationship where the real happiness begins.
Shauna Nyquist has a podcast on marriage that I have listened to time and time again. I’ve sent it to friends and couples getting ready to embark on marriage and divorce. She talks about the long term goal of marriage. She talks about wanting decades. After 25 years of marriage my husband and I danced at our daughter’s wedding and we loved that our life together had brought us to that very moment. That is decades and it is as beautiful as it sounds. Totally go for decades.
Check your ego at the door, write a good story, surround yourself with community, continue to love even in those moments when it’s hard, and take your spouse with you. You’ll be dancing decades from now.
I want my girls to dance at their weddings, I want them to dance at their children’s weddings, I want them to dance at their grandchildren’s weddings. I want them to Dance!
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