I am so saddened when I watch other marriages around me failing or struggling. I am equally saddened to listen to single friends who can’t seem to find a partner that they could share their life with. It often leaves me feeling guilty that I happened to “fall into” a really great marriage or I hear the dreaded “your so lucky”. (I always laugh inside. “Lucky” is not a word anyone close to me uses to describe my life.) I could remain in that thought, but it isn’t very long before I have to crack that fairy tale wide open to realize that we have every ingredient for a complete disaster of a relationship. And yet we don’t. Of course the primary reason is because we trust God and we walk every step that we humanly can out of that. It doesn’t mean that it’s perfect because that isn’t possible as long as we are both humans. But it still leaves me pondering about what the real “secret sauce” is.

 

 

This is my husband’s third marriage and my second. We have now been married for 6 years. We are a blended family with 6 kids between us from 3 marriages, it isn’t easy or pretty most days. I had so much distrust from my last marriage that it is amazing I even considered getting married again. My husband is pretty much in the same boat, but for different reasons. We both had a lot of unjust financial baggage from our exes which has taken an amount of patience and perseverance I didn’t think either of us possessed. He has a lot of hurts from childhood abuse that led to a bunch of bad choices as a young adult. The list is endless of why we should be a train wreck….an epic “national news” type of train wreck.

 

 

Luck has never had a thing to do with it…that I know for sure. I often think I could put either one of us in a marriage I know is struggling and we would be equally as much of a disaster in their situations as they seem to be. So what is it? How do we have something beautiful with a recipe made with so many rotten ingredients. Here is what I know and believe that could work for anyone wanting to have an incredible marriage. We respect each other and we never accuse the other of trying to intentionally cause the other pain because we don’t try to cause each other pain…ever. I would NEVER do anything to hurt him because I love him and I cherish him. I am proud of him. I am thankful for him. And he feels the same about me. He isn’t perfect and neither am I. I am not trying to control or fix him (this has been a conscious choice and effort after treating my ex-husband like a child) if there is something in his character that needs work (because we are all a work in progress) I bring it to his attention in the most loving, respectful, gracious way I can figure out and then I pray for and trust God to do the rest. I hope he is doing the same for me… I sure don’t want God to leave me the way I am either. I really believe these little steps and mental shift would revolutionize marriages.

 

 

Ephesians 5:33 “However, each one of you should love his wife as he loves himself. And the wife should respect her husband.”