Marriage Insights: Improving Your Marriage Relationship
This is a simple Marriage Insight, where we’re sharing some thoughts from one of our favorite books, “Romance in Real Life” written by Ellyn Sanna. Unfortunately, this book is no longer being published. But we love the thoughts written in it concerning growing the marriage relationship. So, here are a few. Please prayerfully read & consider how you can apply them to your marriage:
“Make your marriage your number one priority after your relationship with God. It’s too easy to let our marriages fall into the background. We would never say our marriages weren’t important—& yet we act as though they are not.” …“Being married isn’t a decision you make once & then be done with it. The wedding ceremony doesn’t magically transform us into ‘married people.’ Instead, being married is a lifetime process we must commit ourselves to again & again.” (Ellyn Sanna)
I admit that I have been guilty of this. My husband and I both have. When we got married, we just slid into life. There were a lot of things to do to build our life together, and we got busy at it. Like many spouses, we became so focused on making life “work” for us that we ran past & over each other to accomplish them. We just let things slide that we really shouldn’t have—such as intentionally growing our marriage relationship. We thought it our love would keep growing & growing as it had in the past. But I was wrong. We both were. It slid backwards.
“The plain fact is that most of us do not take marriage seriously. We get so caught up in all of the other demands that our marriage and the quality of our togetherness fall to the bottom of our ‘to do’ list.” (Evelyn and Paul Moschetta) … It’s important to remember, “Marriage has no automatic pilot. You can’t flick a switch and lean back and forget about it. You have to stay at the controls, making adjustments, making it fly. Every day you have to decide to love your mate. Every day.” (Kevin Leman) You have to make big and little choices to choose each other over other demands.
“A marriage can be improved in many ways but I cannot think of one that doesn’t have something to do with giving.” (Henry James Borys) “Giving” in marriage is manifested in many ways. You are to “honor one another above yourselves.” (Romans 12:10) It’s a matter of giving of yourself to your spouse, “as unto the Lord.” When sacrificial giving is involved, imagine that you’re doing this for the Lord. Essentially you are, much like giving a “cup of cool water” to someone that is thirsty. “Marriage is not just a spiritual communion and passionate embrace; marriage is also three meals a day, sharing the workload and remembering to carry out the trash.” (Dr Joyce Brothers)
It’s like what George Eliot said, “It is not true that love makes all things easy; it makes us choose what is difficult.” And that often involves doing things that we really don’t want to do, when it’s not convenient to do them. Isn’t that what Christ did for us?
God has a very high calling for our marriages. He uses it as a vehicle to grow us up to love and serve beyond our own comfort zone. “Marriage is an occasion to practice the gospel day in and day out. …If we want our marriages to grow and flourish, we will follow the pattern for love that Christ lived. We will look for opportunities to lay down our lives, to put our love into practice. In the context of our daily lives, this seldom means we literally give up our lives for the spouse we love. More likely it means we pick up their dry cleaning—or take out the trash for them when they’re running late.” (Ellyn Sanna) “A growing relationship means turning romantic love inside out—from love that takes to love that gives.” (Henry James Borys)
Again, isn’t that what Christ did for us? And as we’re told in the Bible, “Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 2:6) So, if you want to improve your marriage relationship, do as Christ did and does. As Christ followers, that is our calling. To help with this we’ve added more tips posted in this Insight at: https://marriagemissions.
We strongly encourage you to post some tips you know of. They can help many others to improve all of our marriages. We hope you’ll join us in this mission. ~ Cindy and Steve Wright
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