September 1, 1999
FAMILY MATTERS:
Marital love is deeper than mere feelings
___
I look around at other married people, and it seems they are happier than my husband and I are. Can you tell me where we are missing the boat?
___Actually, you may not be missing the boat at all. Perhaps you are just
missing the understanding needed to value your marriage fully. Too often, we lapse into thinking love is a feeling. It isn't. Love, the kind happy marriages are built on, is a choice and a commitment.
MARY STEDHAM
Family Counselor
Abilene
___My husband and I have been married for 30 years, and we have been parents for 25 years. Our children have brought us both great joy and (at times) deep frustration. Those mixed feelings, though, have nothing to do with our love or lack of love for them. Those feelings are just that--feelings. Sometimes we feel close to our children; sometimes we don't. But always--always--we love them.
___Feelings are kind of like the tides that roll in and out. In the earlier years of our marriage, we found our "tide out" times to be frightening and devoted a good bit of energy to figuring them out and trying to make them go away. In more recent years, we have grown more comfortable with the reality that marriages--ours included--have a rhythm of their own and, at times, a mind of their own. The more either of us tries to make our relationship be a certain way, the more likely we are to prolong the tide-out time. To stand on the shore wondering whether the tide would ever come in again would probably be a poor use of one's life energy. To needlessly question our marriages when the tide is out for a time would seem to be equally unnecessary--even wasteful.
___I have too often spent needed strength wondering when and how things would be better in my marriage instead of thanking God and my husband for the challenges and joys that very day held. When I switch my focus, I always find God is at work--even in my marriage. He reminds me I am loved, not for what I do but because he has chosen to love me. Then he invites me to live out that kind of love toward my marriage partner. Mike, my beloved 30-year companion, ends most of his prayers at home with the same sentence: "And we thank you most of all, Lord, for life itself."
___Perhaps we need to pray daily, "Thank you, Lord, for marriage itself." I think such a sense of gratitude could give us not only an awareness of what we have before us but fresh eyes with which to see it!
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