Happily Ever After

Today, my husband and I are celebrating 22 years of marriage. It has been a great run. But it has been so much work.

I knew, we knew, it would be WORK getting married and staying married. But, there are things you know and then there are things you KNOW. After 22 years, we KNOW it is work.

We have experienced for better or worse days. We have endured for richer or poor times. We have lived through sickness and health together. After 22 years, I realize you cannot determine the success of marriage by the number of good and bad days. You cannot even evaluate it by the season you are walking through. A successful marriage takes a lifetime. It’s being able to look back on 22 years and say, “it is good, very good”.

When God created the world, on the seventh day, He rested. On the seventh day, He sat back and evaluated all He had created. Then, when He was done, He determined it was good. Why do we insist something has to be great to be valuable?

God didn’t say creation was great. He said it was good. Good is solid. Good is secure. Good tells us it is exactly the way it is supposed to be; the way God says it should be. And it wasn’t until He was finished that He was able to determine its goodness.

Are you trying to determine your marriage’s “goodness” after only a few short years? Are you evaluating its “goodness” by the season you are in? Are you calling success the happiness you feel today? It may be you have prematurely evaluated your marriage. Let God have a try. Let Him evaluate it and tell you when it is good in His eyes.

Most of us are just getting started. The first ten years we were still trying to figure out how to do this thing. Then we added children to the mix…like we had any clue about that either. Maybe you need to give yourself a break. Give your spouse a break. You are both still muddling through a lifetime. It will take a lifetime to create a successful marriage. Hang in there! God will make a way!