Sacred Marriage, Chapters 7 and 8

One characteristic holds the history of God and Israel together – perseverance.  When Israel turned her back on God, God didn’t turn His back on Israel… I particularly relate to the four hundred years of silence between the Old and New Testaments.  So often it isn’t that our marriages are either good or bad – they just are.

In fact, some experts suggest it takes from nine to fourteen years for a couple to truly “create and form its' being.”3  When I hear of couples who break up after just three or four years, I feel sad because they haven’t even begun to experience what being married is really like… it takes at least the span of a decade for the sense of intimacy to really display itself in the marriage relationship.

I really loved chapter 7 of this book, loved it!!  And while chapter 8 had some good points, I felt it was a little redundant.  Which begs to be said…  the idea of perseverance is extremely important to marriage.

And as I read through this chapter, I couldn’t help but smile to myself.  Because it was in these chapters that I saw Jon and myself, at this stage of our marriage.

We’re celebrating 10 years in May.  10 years of marriage.  This past October we celebrated 14 years together.  14 years.  I met Jon at the young age of 16, we started dating two years after that.  In two years, Jon will have been a part of my life for over half of it.

That’s a long time.  And yet, at times, it feels as though its always been this way.  It feels… right.

Marriage has been described as a roller coaster, with its dips and climbs.  Or even a landscape with hills and valleys.  I can attest to the truth in both of them.  We have been through the mundane, every-day-is-the-same-as-yesterday in our marriage.  We have been through the don’t-talk-to-me-you-can’t-even-breathe-correctly moments in our marriage.  We have been through valleys that have lasted years, only to be uplifted to a mountain top weeks or months later.

And right now… Oh, my goodness… Right now, we are reaping the rewards of a hill together.  Heck, I think we jumped from the mountaintop into the clouds.  It’s a time in marriage that we’re enjoying the butterflies, the secret looks, the bone-melting-stomach-jumping-kisses that are being stolen in the kitchen.  I can honestly say that in the 14 years we’ve been together, this phase has only happened twice in our relationship.  The beginning.  And now.  I never imagined I’d get to have that time back and I’m relishing every moment of it.

Because like clockwork, this season will end and a new one will begin.  It may be a walk through the valley, or standing on the edge of a cliff.  It might become boring where the landscape doesn’t change for miles.  I don’t know what the future holds.  But I do know that the good times sustain the bad times, and the bad times make you appreciate the good times.  And on it goes.

Perseverance.  One word.  A whole lot of action.
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³ Oliver, Conjugal Spirituality, 33.