We have reached a milestone, 40 years of living happily ever after!
What is a happy marriage?
What keeps a marriage together?
What tears a marriage apart?
I don't have the answer to any of those questions! As I see the marriages that fall apart in Christian circles, it scares me! Do we even have what it takes to keep our marriage together?
As I look back to the day we got married, we were two kids that had no idea what we were doing! We didn't know where we wanted to be in 10 years! We definitely didn't know how we were going to get there.
We didn't start married life with a hefty bank account, two vehicles and a new house. It took everything we had to buy several appliances. Thankfully our mobile home came with the job. We were ready to face the world together but we didn't have a clue what it was going to cost.
As the hurdles started flying at us, we would blunder our way over them. Sometimes we would try to take different routes, then it would take a while to find our way back to each other. Some of the hurdles turned into mountains that we thought we would face every day the rest of our lives. We didn't have Dr Dobson, Gary Smalley, or Dennis Rainey to see if this was normal wedded bliss! We didn't give up, on our marriage or each other!
Phillipians 3:13 ...."forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before", I'm taking this out of context here but it works!! This works in our Christian life as well as our marriage! We forgave and forgot all the past hurts. Trying to carry all that stuff through the years just bogged us down. Forget what happened yesterday and start each day with a clean slate!
We are two different personalities. We don't always like the same things. I like an omelet with as many veggies as you can stash into it, he likes a meat and cheese omelet and that's it!! I say its boring, he says its good!
When we go on vacation, he likes to head for the hills or mountains away from people and as close to nature as he can get.
I'm not a shopper, but I do love to stroll through the gift shops, looking at everything, buying nothing. We do both, he endures the gift shops, while I follow him through the mountains.
I think God put me in Rob's life to balance his orderliness. he has a place for everything and everything is in its place! When he does misplace something, I want to jump up and down! It happens so seldom.
I on the other hand, have spent most of my life looking for stuff! When I use something, that's where I leave it! I can stand at my desk, write out a grocery list, pick up the list, and walk out of the room. Ten minutes later I'm ready to head for the store but I can't find the list anywhere! It has completely vanished!
Then there are the times when our personalities take different directions....
He has had a full week of tilling and sowing and wants to spend Sunday afternoon at home. I start to feel like a caged lion after 6 days of just doing my normal chores. I remember how many times he has said, "I know of a place you would really like to see...."
So we're sitting there reading but I want to do something...anything! Even a walk...(I hate to walk!!!) So I say, "Lets do something" and he says, "What do you want to do" Now I know where this is going, so I say, "Nothing, just forget it" Then he says, "I hate when you do that, just tell me what you want to do and we'll do it" And I'm thinking "You are the one who had all these ideas of things you wanted to show me and now you can't think of a single one of them???" So we sit there in silence for several minutes, till finally he says, 'You wanna go for a drive ?" "Yes, Yes, Absolutely, that's exactly what I want to do!!". I am so happy, he suggested a drive!...even if I did goad him into it!!
We spent a Saturday morning digging potatoes. Till we were finished the sun was hot and we were feeling a little over heated. We took a lunch break then Rob wanted to take an electric fence down around our dried up river bed. He planned to move the fence across a new alfalfa field that he had started but he didn't want the cows to graze it. The field wasn't that wide so he decided to drag the fence to its new location instead of rolling it up and unrolling it again. It sounded like a good plan to me, except that it kept getting hung up on sunflower roots. Till we got the fence down and moved to the new fence line we were both exhausted. We were two hours beyond the time he told me it would take. I didn't have any snacks and our water was running low. Rob was overheated from pounding all those T-posts. I hadn't eaten lunch so I was suffering from acute...I don't know what... but I was sick! He had been putting up the fence as he pounded in the T-posts so we were making progress. We just had to put more plastic posts in to stabilize it and unravel the knot, that had materialized at the end of our fence as we were dragging it. We finally got the knot out! Rob tried to push a plastic post into the ground but it wouldn't penetrate. The ground was harder than concrete! I could have cried, I was so tired and hungry, we were only about 15 minutes from being finished. Rob said, "I'll take you back to the house so you can rest, get my drill and come out and work till midnight till I get these posts in." I don't know why, but all of a sudden I saw red!! I don't think it had anything to do with my upset stomach. "You can rest" and "I'll work till midnight" did it! Thankfully I was too sick to respond! I knew he was discouraged but I felt wounded by that remark. I said, "Can we please eat supper before you come back out?" It was almost 11 hours since breakfast and I was fading fast! I was right, it was food we needed! We were both in better humor after we got food! I went back out with him and drove the side-by-side while he finished putting posts in the ground. He didn't need to drill too many postholes, if he found a crack in the ground the post went right in. We were a happy couple heading back to the house, and it was a pretty long time before midnight too, I might add!!
So you see, we still don't have any idea what we are doing, but God took our imperfections and made us perfect for each other. We still blunder our way over the hurdles, we just try to jump them together now!
We were visiting with some close friends who were married over 60 years. They were having a good natured argument about something that happened a long time ago. We said, "Hey, you guys are being a bad example for us young ones!!" They both stopped and looked at us, "We aren't arguing," they said, laughing, "we're just having a moment of intense fellowship!!" Half the fun of "intense fellowship" is laughing at the silliness of it afterward!
Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength,
While loving someone deeply gives you courage. (Laozi)
The secret to a happy marriage remains a secret! (Henry Youngman)
