3 Sure-Fire Ways to
Build a Successful Marriage
How did we make
it? How have we survived 16 years and still going strong? It hasn’t been
easy. It’s taken a lot of work over a lot of time. But it’s not rocket
science. It really never is. We’ve learned that it’s as simple as making a
few things top priority.
1. Serve one
another.
If I wrote a
book on making marriage I would center it around serving one another. In fact,
very soon we’re opening up an entire marriage course on this very subject! This
is the most obvious means to keeping your marriage healthy and at the same
time, the most overlooked and underused. Several years ago I had an ‘ah-ha’
moment. In the middle of a really bad stretch for us, God spoke to my heart and
simply said, “Serve her just like you serve others.” For some reason, we can be
so good at serving people we don’t sleep next to but terrible at serving the
one we do.
Why? It’s
simple—serving others is a choice. And when I chose to serve my wife and
actually put her needs above my own, there is peace between us and in our home.
She echoed the same back to me. Fellas—it’s easier for your wife to want to
serve your needs when you’re serving hers. Trust me.
2. Let love
grow.
I’m not a
believer in love at first sight. I never have been. Even when I was in high
school and gushing over Richard Marx power ballads (it’s true, I admit it.
Mancard will be surrendered shortly). I think infatuation at first sight is real,
but love at first sight? Nope. The reason? Love is a process that grows
over time. The moment you see “the one” for the first time, it’s impossible to
have weathered storms like changing diapers, feeding a new born baby every hour
together, holding their hair while they hug a toilet and vomit, standing at a
funeral and saying goodbye to a loved one together, figuring out how the bills
are going to get paid, and living with each other’s idiosyncrasies. These are
all things that happen over three, five, 10, and 20 years or more. Through
it all, love grows.
Love is more than just a feeling.
It’s a
deep-rooted commitment that holds strong through really great times and really
hard times. I look at our life over the past decade, and I see how our love has
grown. I love my wife more today than I did when I first married her. How we
feel about each other today is far beyond how we felt about each other when we
first met. It’s taken a mixture of really difficult and really celebratory
times for that to happen.
3. Celebrate
Success AND Failure.
Sounds strange
doesn’t it? Why would I celebrate failures? Here’s why—our failures, like
successes, build character and they bind our hearts closer together. This is
true for any area of your life but especially marriage. The truth is, you might
have more failures than success. That’s just the way life is. In marriage,
figuring out how to move on through failure is tough, but it makes you stronger
together.
I could
use thousands of words telling story after story of friends and colleagues
who’ve walked through the most devastating failures with their spouse and lived
to tell about it. Almost all of them would echo that it’s turned them into a
better person and developed more character than they ever knew was possible.
Learn to celebrate both success and failure.
Truth is,
marriage was never created to be easy. God never said getting married would
make life easy. He just said we can get married. That’s why grace
exists. Grace covers a multitude of sins and it sustains marriage through the
strongest hurricane.
I had to laugh
a while back when a friend of mine told me that in a recent fight he was having
with his wife, she blurted out, “If only our marriage was like Mike &
Kristin’s. I bet they don’t fight like this!” Obviously this was an
assumption based on what she did not know about our marriage, or
our relationship. We can fight with the best of ’em! We are far from perfect,
but we are committed to never giving up. Maybe that’s where you need to start?
written by Mike Berry
#its_all_about_relationship
#oluthomas
#oluthomas_sharing_the_love
https://m.facebook.com/oluthomasshare
Your views and thoughts are most welcome...
No comments:
Post a Comment