Talk Is Sheep

I was making the trek back to Bloomsburg earlier this year and as I usually do when I’m in the car, I hit the Scan button and search for something good to listen to. Sometimes I’m looking for something to dance to, other times news, but I settled for one of those Christian talk radio shows that today just happened to be extolling the values of marriage. As I listened, I was reaffirmed in my desire to have an amazing marriage. Not to be confused with a great marriage, but one that works because we work on it and lasts because we continue to see the value in each other.

Living in a world where it’s equally common to divorce as it is to marry, I struggle with the fear of ending up in a situation where someday Lee and I find it more favorable to separate than to stay together. Even though we’ve already agreed that this is our Plan, our Only Plan…that there is no Plan B and we are determined to make it right and make it work, the enemy always finds those little ways to make you doubt.

Back to the radio show, as I was listening, the speaker was discussing the reasons that so many people “fall out of love” with the person that they vowed before God to love til “death do us part”. Among them, and the one that really struck me as important to remember, is that we lose sight of the value of our spouse.

Those days when you are first dating and learning so much about each other, the value is extremely high. Each glance, each time you hold hands, each time you talk on the phone is extremely important. You want to LEARN more, you want to INVEST in the value that you see in that person and see what your investment returns.

Then after you finally marry, you can live in bliss for the rest of your days as you bask in the rays of the HONEYMOON phase…right? Hmmmm…maybe not. And that’s when things start to get hard. When the normal routine of your day is no longer focused completely on those blissful feelings of “I married the man who makes my heart go crazy”, but the reality of routine, and the realization that marriage is hard work. It’s a full time job.

Last night after I told Lee I really didn’t feel like I was getting enough face to face time with him (I’m a woman…I need these things , we sat out on the back porch and just talked about the earthquake/tornado/tsunami that has been our lives for the past two months. In these situations, I take stock of my investment and I can again reaffirm that Lee is committed to me, and I him no matter how hard it gets. After probably a year and a half of feeling like: “Wow, I still can’t believe I got to marry this amazing man” I finally realized that I did believe it, but it was normal now. It was the reality. I can look at him and see that he is not perfect, but despite those imperfections, I can see the value in him. I can respect him for the decisions he makes and trust in knowing that aside from God, I am next in line in his priority list.

So in our face to face chat last night, I confessed that I really felt like I was out of the honeymoon stage of our marriage. At that point, Lee said, “Yeah, I think I’ve moved into the roommate stage.”

“Uh. That doesn’t sound too good.”  I said…”I’m at least in the best friend stage…you know with romance involved.”

“Oh yeah…the roommate stage includes all of those.”

So, if we’ve moved on to these various stages…how can we maintain a high value of each other throughout the rest of our lives? The thing that works for us is to continually work and educate ourselves on what an amazing marriage looks like. So far we’ve done The Love Dare, watched Laugh Your Way to a Better Marriage, and Lee has attended Marked Men for Christ. All three of these things are Biblical/God Centered approaches to living. As long as we make God the priority in our lives and find our contentment in Him, I believe our investment in each other will continue to allow us to find the value in each other in marriage.

I was going to be punny and tie this in with something Wall Street-y…but I just don’t know what I’m talking about!

This entry was posted on Monday, July 19th, 2010 at 1142 and is filed under Things We Do, Things We Like, Things We Say, Things We Think. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.