Ruth's Ramblings

What is marriage? (one aspect, out of many)

Just beginning to realize how much work it will take to continue building and working on a marriage (are we no longer newlyweds at this point?). The need to stay connected in every part of our relationship was apparent this week. A part of that encompasses my responsibility as a wife to continue seeking after my husband's needs rather than my own, one that I so often am guilty of not fulfilling (despite Wayne's protests).

[Marriage] is a dynamic, not static, relationship. It gets either better or worse. As people either grow or deteriorate, relationships between them must grow or deteriorate. A common explanation offered for marital incompatibility is "We outgrew each other." A couple meets in high school or college, shares youthful interests, marries, begins to find out that "making it" in the world may not be as much of a lark as making friends, making grades, or making touchdowns, was back on campus. Responsibility beings to close in and bills have to be paid, decisions made, hard work done for which there are no public (all too often not private) rewards. It's been said that if a couple doesn't grow together they grow apart [emphasis mine]. But for the couples who have in all seriousness said their vows before God and in the presence of witnesses the possibility of growing apart need not be allowed. It need never be something which "happens to" them, as though they were bystanders injured by some force which they were powerless to protect themselves from. They have willed to love and love together. They stand, not helpless, but in relation to God, each responsibility to fulfill his vows to the other. Each determines to do the will of God so that together they move toward "the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ." And, if God is viewed as the apex of a triangle of which they are the two base points, movement toward Him necessarily decreases the distance between them. Drawing near to God means drawing nearer to each other, and this means growth and change [emphasis mine]. They are being changed into the same image from glory to glory. There is no such thing as stagnation, or that relatively innocent-standing word incompatibility.

Excerpt from Elisabeth Elliot's Let Me Be A Woman © Tysondale House Publishers, Inc.

Posted by Ruth at 12/10/2003