Today we have the amazing Faith sharing a wonderful post with us today. Faith is about as pure and lovely as they come, and always has such wonderful things to say about marriage. I’m thrilled she wrote this post for me to share with you all. Enjoy!
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Hello My Little Sunshines Readers! I’m excited to get to share my heart with you today.
I’m Faith & I blog over at Life w/ Mrs G & the Artist! I blog about all kinds of things but my heartbeat for my blog is to build a community for women in all stages of life to come and be encouraged and uplifted. I also love blogging about God and what he is teaching me and how he is helping me grow and mature in not only life but also as a wife in my marriage. I love marriage posts and encouraging words that help in the difficult times so I hope that is what this post does for you … uplifts and encourages.
Marriage …
It can be a very scary thing … I remember when I was a kid and even in my teenage years when all I thought I wanted was to get married and have babies.
I thought … if I can just find the right boy and fall in love and get married it will all be easy sailing from there … gosh did I have a lot to learn. To me, in those years marriage meant that I got to …
+ spend every waking minute with the boy I loved
+ do whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted
+ take fun vacations with said boy
+ have beautiful babies with that handsome boy
+ and spend the rest of my life … having the time of my life
Again wow … did I have a lot to learned. Marriage is so much more than just loving that wonderful person that stands next to you and says those wonderful vows. I remember it like it was yesterday …
“I, Faith, take thee, LG, to be my wedded husband, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do us part, according to God’s holy ordinance; and thereto I pledge thee my love.”
I do remember those vows and yes it does feel like it was yesterday but the lessons I have learned in the last 13 years let me know that it wasn’t yesterday. All those things I thought marriage was going to be … they look a tad different from where I’m sitting now. Now don’t get me wrong … I’m not one of those people that bad mouth and talk about marriage like its a horrible thing. I’m not that person and this is not that post. However, my thoughts and feelings toward the idea of marriage is completely different now than it was then. I think sometimes people romanticize marriage. People, lets get real …
Marriage is H-A-R-D! It takes work, it takes a lot of sweat and tears, a lot of weathering the storm together and not sinking the ship in the process. Simply put … marriage is more than love, hearts, and flowers. It’s more than the feelings you feel in the beginning. To make a marriage work you have to have commitment more so than love. Love is great, wonderful, and beautiful … but when the honeymoon phase is over there has to be something more than feelings of love. There has to be a commitment to each other, and to the vows you made. A commitment that no matter what life throws at you … you are going to make it out the other side together.
So what is Commitment vs Love you might ask? Well, I’m going to let you in on my secrets that I’ve learned so far on this crazy marriage journey.
LOVE ~ well obviously … love is a feeling. You meet someone, you have an attraction for them. You decide you like them based on appearance or personality “He has the most kissable mouth I’ve ever seen” or “I could stare into his gorgeous eyes all day” OR “he says the sweetest things and just makes me feel so cherished and loved … I think I’m in love, I think I could marry him, this is what marriage is all about” … WRONG! Those are all feelings that you are experiencing because your body, senses, personality found someone else’s body, looks or personality attractive. However, these feelings don’t last forever {sorry people … it’s just the facts} and you have to have something more to base a life long relationship on …you have to have commitment.
Commitment ~ It’s not a feeling. Well, it’s not just a feeling. Commitment is a decision based on feelings AND logic. It means you are listening to something other than just your body that happens to find this undependable, disloyal, and “totally has no idea what the word commitment means” boy attractive. You are using that beautiful mind you have to think through things rationally and prayerfully and making a decision based on those rational thoughts instead of those undependable feelings. People make good and bad decisions every day, with everything in their lives. For instance, the other week I made a decision to really take charge of our finances and really start using our budget the way it should be used. That was a good decision. I also the other week … stayed up until 2 in the am reading a book when I had to be up early for work … not such a great idea. My 35 year old body was ready to kill my 13 year old brain the next morning. Now, reading until 2 in the morning was not a great decision but it was also not a life altering decision like marriage is. When you are thinking marriage your thoughts have to be about commitment, not based on just “feelings” in general.
I think the problem is that our society or maybe its our generation {I’m not sure which} has somehow lumped the two together. We think that love and commitment are one and the same. I mean, we are always saying we need commitment to make a marriage work but then we have the saying “love is all we need” or “love makes the world go round.” It makes it sound like if you have one, you have the other by default … and this couldn’t be farther from the truth. If it’s just love without commitment it’s very likely to fail because sometimes in marriage … you don’t love that person. Sometimes you barely like them and you have to have something besides those lovey-dovey feelings that you think marriage is about to see you through those times. It’s not about those feelings. Trust me … sometimes I wish it was.
So Love vs Commitment? Definitely keep love around. It’s an amazing feeling. Those feelings of first love, and first kisses, first looks of love … those are so fun and wonderful memories to cherish. But just know that to have a lasting marriage {in my opinion} you have to have commitment. You have to decide to love that person every day, through all the ups and downs, through all the happy times, through all the heartbreak. Through all the fun times, but also through the tears, struggles and yes, even through the fights and when you don’t know which way is up. You have to fight together to get to the light at the end of the tunnel. Being committed to each other and your relationship is what will get you there.
I read something the other day that I thought fit this post perfectly. It was simply this: Commitment isn’t part of your love, but rather, something you decided to add to it. You have to add commitment to love to make a marriage work. I love LG with every fiber of my being. He is the person I want to wake up to every morning and go to sleep with every night. He is my best friend, and I want to share everything life has to offer with him. But commitment is what makes my marriage to that wonderful man work. There have been situations and times in our marriage that were rough, times when I would have totally understood if he walked away. Our marriage has had those rough patches and in those rough patches … what keeps us from walking away is that commitment to stick together and work through everything that comes our way.
So when you are considering marriage. When you meet that true love, that one and only. Sit down, have a conversation about marriage and what it means to you. Make sure they are going to be in it for the long haul. Make sure they understand the difference between love and commitment. It will save you a world of heartache in the end. 🙂
WANT TO READ MORE?
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Here are some of my favorite Marriage posts you might enjoy. 🙂
– 5 ways to earn your husband’s trust.
– Silent “I love you’s” from your Husband.
– What does your husband need to hear from you?
– 7 ways to make marriage fun.
