Today is my 18th wedding anniversary. My wife and I were married young, after meeting each other online and a very brief courtship. As I look back, I’m pretty sure we were nuts. There are a handful of factors whose presence make a marriage statistically more likely to succeed or fail over the long term. My wife and I managed to come up on the wrong side of an awful lot of the divorce indicators. We didn’t know each other well, we argued a lot, we lacked financial stability (I lost my job the week we got married), we were up to our eyes in student loan debt, we were too young, too immature, and had all sorts of other issues. We have not had an easy time and have not always been happily married. My wife often jokes that our 18 years together have been the 11 happiest years of her life. Looking back, I think there are 2 strengths we had as a couple that resulted in our remaining married for so long and eventually finding harmony and happiness.
The first strength was our agreement that divorce was never ever an acceptable option for us. We discussed this before our wedding day and considered it to be an issue of paramount importance. Our religious convictions meant that our vows before God were serious business. I am not suggesting that folks who get divorced aren’t religious or anything like that. We just agreed that there was never an option to end our marriage. We never said the word in our conversations. Even in our worst fights and hardest times, fixing our marriage was the only option on the table. This meant that, at times, we had to endure periods of hopelessness, where prayer was our only refuge. I’m not saying that neither of us ever considered it, but in the end, we came back to the need to remain married as a standard we had agreed on. This meant that whenever things were miserable for us, we didn’t have a choice but to do the hard work of reconciliation.
The second strength, which we did not really figure out until later, contributed greatly to our happiness and the strength of our relationship. We understand the Biblical teaching on marriage to be that part of following Jesus is ensuring that our marriage is healthy. I serve my wife because serving is the example and direction Jesus set for his followers. I love my wife sacrificially, because that is a part of being a follower of Jesus. I make sure to resolve conflicts effectively because Peter wrote that if you are not right with your wife, your prayers are hindered. Basically, treat your wife right or God isn’t listening when you talk to him. We forgive often, because God forgives us. It is a huge deal for a follower of Jesus to be right in marriage. This strength has led to our willingness to be humble in our dealings with each other and work tirelessly toward being happier. Working toward a better marriage is an obligation to God. On our wedding day 18 years ago, we swore that it’d be our priority.
As difficult as these 2 things have made our lives, in the long run we have been blessed and enriched through them.
