That threw me! Didn't Disney movies always tell me that "one day my prince will come" and it will be "a whole new world" when I meet him and I'll think to myself "so this is love" and when he finally decides to "kiss the girl" there may or may not be fireworks?
This is a very poor picture of love and of marriage. It builds up romance as the end all, be all of a relationship. While love can be very romantic, our culture has absolutely over-romanticized marriage. Romantic love, per our culture, is the warm fuzzies of Disney movies. It's the heart-racing, palms-sweating, dizzy-eyed giddiness. But it cannot be sustained. Unfortunately, that's why so many marriages fail. If one goes into marriage with the expectation for a constant, consistent feeling of romance, that expectation will be unmet and will leave that person jaded and wanting more, or worse, totally convinced that he or she married the "wrong person". It's been three months of dating, seven months of engagement, and two months of marriage, and I don't always get giddy over Garrett. My heart doesn't jump out of my chest each and every time he gets home from work and smiles at me. I love being with him, and I love seeing him after any sort of absence. And he does still sweep me off my feet sometimes. But I'm not surviving on romantic love. And I'm sure not banking on romance to carry our marriage through.
I think it's just fine to consider your spouse your soulmate. After all, Garrett is my soul's mate. He's the person I have chosen. But it isn't because all the stars were aligned that fateful day in Golden, Missouri. And although I did grow to love Garrett deeply, I didn't choose to marry him because of that. I chose to marry him because I choose to be in love with him everyday. And when I don't feel in love with him, I love him anyway.
I would like to give credit where credit is due, but I don't remember where I saw this, or when. All I know is that a number of years ago, I read the following, or heard it, and from that instant, it has stuck with me:
You don't fall in love; you fall in holes.
You don't fall out of love; you fall out of trees.
It may sound silly, but it is PROFOUND. Love isn't something that, by some cosmic occurrence, happened to me. I'm not the victim of Cupid's arrows. I didn't just happen to fall into it, and I certainly won't just happen to fall out. It is a decision, plain and simple.
God is my true Spirit-mate. God completes me. He made me for himself, was the first one to love me, and is the only one who has, can, and will love me perfectly. And since the day I decided to follow him, the ultimate purpose of my life, the one goal that supersedes all others, is to look less like me and more like him everyday. While knitting my heart to him is the most important thing in my life, I believe that marriage is second. It is the second most important relationship in my life, and more than any other relationship, it inherently, by its nature, has the power to show Christ to an unbelieving world. God didn't necessarily plan for me to marry Garrett (although I believe in his omniscience). God's plan includes me glorifying him with my life, and thus my marriage. It was God's plan that, should I choose to marry (and again, he knew I would), that my marriage would preach the gospel.
So what makes a marriage work if I'm not bound to my husband by the cosmic threads of the universe, or more, if God didn't create us with each other in mind and his power alone keeps us together?
More than just a simple decision to continue loving (which I'm sure veterans of marriage can tell you is definitely not as easy as it sounds), I believe that marriage is about willingness to meet one another's deepest needs. Garrett and I are reading a book entitled His Needs, Her Needs by Willard Harley. In his book, he writes the following:
We think the dynamics of a good marriage depend on some mysterious blend of the "right" people. Or if a marriage turns out badly, we call the two people "wrong" for each other. While it's true that two inherently incompatible people might marry, it's unusual. More frequently, marital breakups occur when one or both partners lack the skills or awareness to meet each other's emotional needs. More often than not, being right or wrong for someone depends not on some mysterious compatibility quotient, but on how willing and able you are to meet that someone's needs.
Seems pretty unromantic, right? But God's promises don't include a lifetime of romance. After all, the Greek word for romantic love doesn't even appear in the Bible. That doesn't mean we'll never have it; it simply means our joy is not dependent upon it, and neither is the success of our marriages.
If we rely on the feelings of love to sustain love, we will be sorely disappointed. If we expect that God will bring along the right person who is a perfect blend of all the happy things we enjoy and is void of all the habits we abhor, we will be sorely disappointed. But if we recognize that marriage is an opportunity to choose to love like Christ loves, to decide to sacrifice like Christ sacrificed, and to allow ourselves to be made more like him, I bet there will be a revolution in the way marriages function. If we are more committed to serving our spouses and meeting their needs and less demanding that we are served and our needs met, maybe marriage will become less of a fast food menu, where you try one thing and if it doesn't work, order differently next time, and more of a lifelong classroom in which we learn, grow, and change. Who knows - maybe it could happen. Like I said in my last post, I don't know much, but I sure hope for a lot.
Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.
-Eph 3:20-21
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