It All Depends on One Thing
“What is it that makes your marriage work?”
In one sense, there’s not a simple answer to that question.
Many couples look for a formula to guarantee success—a detailed blueprint, a perfect recipe, a business plan. They want to know what factors x and y will combine to give them product z, where z is a healthy, happy marriage. As if you can mix two parts of this with a little bit of that and find assured marital bliss.
But a sustainable, “working” marriage can never be reduced to a scientific or mathematical equation. It cannot be produced by a chemical reaction or on a factory assembly line. Neither industry nor technology can produce a lasting relationship. All such metaphors—along with the thinking that inspires them—are wrongheaded.
A sustainable marriage can never be manufactured or produced; it can only be nurtured.
You don’t build a marriage; you grow a marriage.
You learn what you can about the soil it’s planted in and provide a healthy place for it to grow.
You discover by trial and error what to feed it and how much to water it.
You protect it as much as you can from the elements; but eventually you see that it can weather most any storm.
You guard it from predators and eliminate any harmful weeds that sprout up.
You get dirt under your fingernails, and you put your own sweat and tears into giving it the best possible chance to succeed.
And then you place your fervent trust and hope in God that He will cause it to grow.
Sometimes the hard work of nurturing will make your joints sore and your muscles ache; but you do it anyway, because the work is important, this labor of love.
The person to whom you’ve made the commitment is, after all, worth a lifetime investment and more.
The one thing it takes to make a marriage work is the unending determination to nurture this relationship with the one you love. God will give the growth.
Continue the series: A Private Message to Guys on Marriage