Marriage is brilliantly preempted with a “better or worse” clause. These three words and the two that follow (“I do!”) encase your relationship in all-encompassing “no matter what” vernacular. And, if you’ve been married for any length of time, you’ll agree: it needs to be!
Although we anticipate great times as we stand at the altar (yes, together is “better”), experience, wisdom, and our friends tell us that seasons of “worse” will also be embedded in the years ahead.
The question is not whether tough times will be faced, but rather what principles will guide you out of those times, and will you be better or worse off after them?
It’s the nature of love for it to be tested. Your love will be tested. But don’t doubt in the night what you felt in the day. Act out of the love you felt before in order to feel it renewed again.
Hard times in a marriage don’t need to mean love is lost, but rather more love is to come. Take the perspective that your love is what’s true, and the stress, difficulty, challenges are temporary.
Even if you are in a season of “worse” right now, this much is true: in days, weeks or months from now, you will powerfully feel things for your spouse again. You get to choose, right now in the difficult season, whether it’ll either be the aching void of regret and aloneness, or a deep re-emerging passion for the one you chose to walk with through the night.
Don’t doubt the day. Marriage means “better” comes.
Brilliantly spoken and brilliantly accurate!
So very true, especially the need to “act out the love . . ” You capture well the truth of marriage.