And Marriage Happens

Marriage - It's A God Thing

"A good marriage is that in which each appoints the other guardian of his solitude.  Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue to exist, a wonderful living side-by-side can grow up, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole against a wide sky."  
                                                                      – Rainer Maria Rilke

Sometimes it can seem that God’s calling is beyond our reach.  When we look at our lives and the struggles of our marriage we do not see how we can possibly be this unified couple who are truly living in Holy Matrimony.  For some of us we realize that our spouse is just not meeting our needs.  In laster posts we are going to deal with the concept of what it is we want from our marriages.  Sometimes our needs are not being met because our spouse is unable or unwilling to meet them.  When that happens I would suggest you seek help from your Pastor or perhaps even a professional marriage counselor.  Yet I have noticed that often times our needs are not being met because our needs are not reasonable.  In the lessons and exercises that we will be exploring during this blog we will look at how we can bring our desires for marriage in line with what can be considered a God honoring and honest agenda.

For others of us we find the struggle towards marital unity to be blocked by the poor communication we share in our marriages.  So many times one spouse or the other will declare that “she just doesn’t listen to me” or “he won’t tell me what he is feeling.”  Many of our problems in marriage can be worked through when we learn to communicate with each other in a Godly fashion.  We will be exploring together what it means to have open communication that it positive, productive and powerfully clear.  We will explore together Godly communication.

Ultimately marriage will have times when conflict will arise, and when those times happen we will wonder if it is even plausible that God could expect unity from us.  In our journey together we are going to explore how we can go about seeking Godly and loving resolution to our struggles in marriage.  Marital discord does not have to sever a relationship.  It does not have to become a thorn in the side of your efforts at unity.  Our God is a God of peace and in Him we can find the strength and ability to work through those issues that arise.  Can we solve every disagreement?  No, but we can find unity in the midst of our struggles.

I have come to believe that the key to understanding how to have this Holy Matrimony is found in the relationships that we looked at earlier.  The four relationships that we find in every marriage; the internal relationship with self, the horizontal relationship with our spouse, the vertical relationship we share with God, and the shared, or triune, relationship we as a couple have with God, are the key to being able to find marital unity in the midst of our horizontal struggles.  How we relate to each of these relationships will shape our marriages completely.  So, before we can go on to exploring our wants in marriage, or communication, or conflict resolution, we need to understand how these relationships can be healthy and enable us to grow in Holy Matrimony.  Remember, your marriage can be all that it is meant to be – after all, marriage is a God thing.