The Hardness of Marriage

As I was browsing through my feed, I came across a post from a sweet wife.  She had a rough marriage day, and felt safe to vent about her husband there.  She felt as if she was among friends and I understood her reason for reaching out.  What shocked me was the hundreds of comments that followed, urging her to leave her husband.  You deserve better, you need to just leave, he clearly doesn’t love you, follow your heart and you are worth more than this were among some of the ones repeated over and over.  I can’t imagine how overwhelmed her heart must have felt.  And my heart broke for her.

Haven’t we all had days like that, in the messy trenches of life?  The kids are screaming and one is hanging off your leg, the laundry and dishes are piled to the ceiling and your husband just walked through the door and didn’t take his muddy boots off.  We’ve all had those days.  After all, marriage is just two imperfect people living together, failing daily.

Because to be completely honest, I’m going to say something you don’t want to hear so brace yourselves…marriage isn’t that hard.

And before you say “that’s because you haven’t been through what we have”, let me tell you this.  We’ve endured the loss of parents and grandparents.  We’ve had a routine surgery end in a near-death experience.  We’ve been through 17 surgeries at 6 hospitals in 2 states with countless different surgeons.  We’ve heard “you need a stent placed in your brain” and then endured some very sleepless nights while counting on doctors, nurses and clinics all while relying fully on the Lord.  We’ve lived through a separation, job changes, night-shifts, sleepless nights of sick children, financial strain and differing opinions.  And we’ve been poor y’all, like count-your-change-to-go-to-the-store poor.  But I can still look you in the eye and say that marriage is not hard.  And I mean that.

What is hard is life.  But waking up next to this sweet man, my best friend, every day is not hard.  Having someone by my side that has seen me at my weakest and my worst, that looks past the 3rd day of dry shampoo and sweatpants, that knows the good and bad of the depths of my soul but loves me anyways…that is not hard.

When our focus shifts to the hardness of marriage, we not only rob ourselves of the joy found in displaying the love of Christ but we honestly downplay the beauty of it.  Christian marriage is intended to be a picture of the relationship between Christ and His church.  Let me say that again, because it blew my mind when I first learned it.  Our marriage was designed specifically to mirror our relationship between Christ and His church.  We are acting out a living parable where husbands represent Christ and wives represent the church to bring glory to God and to help our children and others around us grasp what God is like in a more concrete way.  Does that change the way you look at marriage?  It sure did with me.  God intended marriage to mirror His relationship with the church so that we could be a testimony to others and SHOW them what God is like.

Marriage means intentionally looking for love.  It’s choosing each other daily.  Love is strung together choices.  The feelings, undoubtedly, will rise and fall.  Being in love with love will fade as the toughness of life becomes a reality.  As life goes on we all change, we grow, we mature, and life changes us.  But marriage is not meant to be a lifetime commitment to fairy tale love alone.  Marriage is designed to be a repetitive I do, a daily commitment of choosing us over me.  You choose to love who they are at each point in life, not only who they used to be.

Every hardness we come across in our marriage can be traced back to sin – infidelity, porn addiction, insecurity, jealousy, selfishness, on and on.  That is why we see a culture full of broken marriages.  I’m not discounting hardship in whatever form it appears in your marriage, but you can’t run from sin.  That’s the thing about sin, it will just follow you into your next relationship.  Eventually, hardships will appear in that marriage as well.

Staying married isn’t always easy.  It might mean you giving up your right to win, giving up always wanting to be right and having the last word, putting your pride aside and putting your spouses needs before your own.  The beautiful thing is the more we put these practices to work, the more you become like Christ.

Romans 8:28 says And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.  Our marriages aren’t exempt from this.  When we are in the middle of a trial in marriage, it’s hard to see how God could ever use it for good.  But He has promised to use them for good, and He is faithful to keep His word.  Give your marriage over to God and allow Him to heal the hardness.  And He will bring beauty from the ashes.

When I fail (do I ever y’all), when I hope my husband chokes on his cereal, and when I am anything but the perfect wife, it is because I am a broken woman in a broken world – it is not because marriage is hard, it’s because sin is hard.  The only way to make your marriage truly work is to center it on Christ.  You have to rely on God for wisdom, power, love and strength for your marriage.  And forgiveness, for that one time you hoped he would choke.