WHAT IF....?

One of my daughter's friends recently made the comment that she was tentative about the commitment of marriage because...What IF!!! What if I get bored in the relationship? Answer: You will. What if there is some one else out there who could make me happy? Answer: There is. What if I married the wrong person? Answer: You did.

Probably not the answers you would expect in the makings of a happy marriage but, nonetheless, those are the answers.

You will get bored in a marriage. Why? Because at that point in time, you are not offering anything to the relationship. You are just trying to see what the relationship can do for you. When that happens, you get totally self-centered and you will get bored. When you want to find the true source of your boredom, go look in the mirror. The most boring person in the room is the one who is bored because that person is not adding anything to the situation and indeed is a drain on it. So, will you get bored in a relationship? Probably. Do you have to get bored in a relationship? No! It just doesn't happen. The choice is yours. You can add to it or you can be a drain on it. You never get bored with anything or anyone you are intellectually, emotionally and physically involved with.

Is there someone else out there who can make you happy? There always is. I know I'm not the only man who could have made a good husband for my wife. She's not the only woman who could have made a good wife for me. The point is, now that we have chosen each other, no one else belongs in the equation. 1+1=1. One her + one me = ONE US. It doesn't matter who else is out there. It only matters that we are with each other. Stay focused on who you are with. It doesn't matter who is interested in you. It only matters who you are interested in. We are not animals that react only to instinct and therefore have no control over our sexual and emotional appetites. The old, "I'm a man and that's the way men are" is just that: OLD. God gave us the ability to think and the ability to make a choice. Why should we deny what He has given us and reduce ourselves to mere animal instinct? The ability to make a choice is a precious freedom that I don't take lightly. I am free to love my wife. I am free to stay faithful to her. I am free to desire her and only her.

What if you marry the wrong person? Like I said, you did. You almost never marry the "right" person for you. You are almost never the "right" person for your spouse. You discover things about each other as you live together. Some things you like and some things you dislike. You discover that you are not "soulmates" as they like to say today. My wife and I were and are very different people. She was in college getting her degree in education to be a teacher and I was a funk musician. We had nothing in common except that we wanted to be together. We learned how to love each other. Then we learned how to love God. Then we learned how to love each other even more. Through our ups and downs, I learned how to be a husband and she learned how to be a wife. We learned how to accept each other, which is sometimes more important than understanding each other. We got the words divorce and separate out of our vocabulary at the beginning of our relationship, BEFORE the ups and downs came into the picture. We got closer and closer to God and deeper and deeper into His Word. We created an "US". The "US" is more important than the individual me. That is marriage for us.

What if...You decide to love each other until "Death do us part"!!!