21 years married and still in love
I can still vividly remember the buzz and excitement I felt this time twenty-one years ago. My heart was singing and doing back-flips as I anticipated my much-dreamt-about wedding day, just 48 hours away. In my mind it had been a long time coming. This was to be the much-awaited culmination of a seven-year courtship (I know that sounds like a very loooong time by today’s standards!) 6th of January 1996 is forever etched in my mind but unsurprisingly the day floated by as if I was in a daze. I was walking on cloud nine as I glided down the aisle to the tune of ‘Mendelssohn’s Wedding March’ and the rest, as they say, is history.
As I reflect back, it’s hard to believe that when I met my husband at 18 I was so convinced that I had found the love of my life. When I look at my 18 year old daughter now I am incredulous at how confident I was that this was a relationship ordained by God. It surprises me even more that my faithful fiancé was willing to wait seven years for me to complete my first and second degrees before saying ‘I do’! Well, thank God that the years have proved us right in our choice to love each other for life. It has been a journey marked by God’s faithfulness. 21 years down the line and still very much in love, I would like to distil a few lessons I have learnt about lasting love in the hopes that they will inspire you to reach for the kind of marriage God has in mind for you.
Start with God
Every marriage is filled with twists and turns, challenges and triumphs. Ours is by no means the exception but one scripture that has meant so much to me in my marriage is 1 John 5:4. ‘For whatever is born of God overcomes the world…’
Marriage was designed to work with God at its centre. He is the one that has the capacity to hold it together. When your marriage has its roots in God, the storms of life will not derail you. When we take God out of the equation, we lose the very essence of what makes marriage doable. The core of your marriage is meant to be God – not religion, not opinions, not rhetoric – but a living, breathing relationship with God that is shared by both parties. This is what makes marriage work. The reason this works is that two people who are submitted to the God of love cannot but love sacrificially. Sometimes couples start off this way but down the line they lose their bearing and the cracks begin to show. The reason why I can trust my heart completely into the hands of my husband is because I know that he listens to God. He doesn’t just talk the ‘Christian talk’.
When push comes to shove, his heart is genuinely devoted to God and out of that overflow he can love me unconditionally and sacrificially. When your marriage is born of God and remains centred on God, loving each other selflessly becomes so much easier.
Refuse to settle
Marriage is always a work in progress. The moment your relationship stops growing, it starts dying imperceptibly. Marriage is not a project you complete on your wedding day so that you can move on to other things. It’s a lifelong commitment to learning, discovery and building together. I can honestly say that after so many years with my husband, I am still learning new things about him, I am continually growing in my understanding of him and our marriage keeps getting better and better. We are constantly opening up our minds to new ways of enriching our relationship and deepening our love for each other. Daily we strive to understand each other better; we learn from every conflict and use it as a stepping stone to another level of intimacy; we continually extend grace to each other and we are committed to being the best for each other. If you feel like your marriage is growing stale, breathe new life into it by learning new ways to please each other and committing to being best friends. You can only get out of your marriage what you are prepared to put into it.
Don’t let anything or anyone come between you
You and your spouse are designed to work as a team. Ecclesiastes 4:9 puts it this way ‘Two are better than one because a good return comes when two work together.’
In other words, two are only better than one when they have learnt to work together. If a husband and wife are constantly paddling in opposite directions, they will get nowhere fast. One of the most important lessons my husband and I have learnt is to face life as a team. There will be many things that seek to divide you but you will need a rock-solid commitment to work with each other and never against each other. The essence of marriage is that you stand shoulder-to-shoulder to challenge anything that threatens your unity. It should always be you and your spouse against the challenge, not you and your spouse against each other because of the challenge. If you waste your energy fighting each other you will make no progress. If you stand together and bring your joint resources, wisdom and energy to bear on every difficulty you face in your home, your marriage will be the stronger for it.
My prayer for you today is that God will multiply to you the joy that I have found in marriage. Marriage is so worth it if you do it God’s way. If your home is hurting at the moment, I pray that God will step in and bring healing to your marriage as you and your spouse commit to doing marriage God’s way.
