Why Marriages Last

If you’ve been married to the same man for as long as I have (44 years today), you’d call it a feat, or even a miracle. Those cheesy, public avowals of everlasting love on FB that are meant to make readers drool with envy would call it: undiminished ardor, or even bliss. 

I call it grace.

For how can two strangers, with individual egos and minds; different characters, tastes, opinions, and habits; and coming from disparate genders and genes live together? How can they continue going through alternating rough and smooth roads, turbulent and fair weather, valleys and plains in a tumultuous world?   

Man has invented these phrases, again parroted from FB: “My soul mate.” “I can’t live without you.” “The most wonderful man/woman in the world.” “You mean the world to me.”  "Thank you for the bliss." And many more mush. 

Some insist the occasion calls for it, but I won’t fall into any of those noisy platitudes, not in public anyway.  I’d rather silently fall into and fall back on . . . 

“Haven’t you read the Scriptures?” Jesus replied. “They record that from the beginning ‘God made them male and female.’” And he said, “‘This explains why a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one.’ Since they are no longer two but one, let no one split apart what God has joined together.” Matthew 19:4-6 (NLT)

For me, those beautiful words spoken by Jesus are carved in stone and in my heart. No cloying words of love for public consumption can make it better than it already is.

Thank you, Lord, for the grace of marriage that lasts in this temporal world.

“. . . till death do us part."