Slowly Being Stripped of the Will of Self

There’s nothing anyone can say to truly prepare you for the pursuit of a biblical marriage. There is no number of marriage seminars, sermons, or counseling sessions that can truly get you to understand what it will be like to no longer live your life solely regarding your own well being. Though we were warned of the struggles we would face, nothing is quite like going through them together for the first time. I can easily say the same about the positive moments in marriage, and how much sweeter they are than they are explained. The struggles, though it may not seem so while enduring them, are truly what increased the joy of the good which results from marriage. It is through these moments that you are slowly stipped of your sence of being an individual, and it is in these moments that you learn the importance of becoming one with your spouse.

For me, however, it is in the struggles that I tend to run to my habits of watching out for my best interest. My selfish desires turn a minimal struggle into something much bigger, and much deeper. As I mentally plan how it is that I am going to fix our problems I disregard the greatest tool that God has given me that I might endure, my husband. Instead of leaning on my husband and trusting God’s provision through him, I become angry and begin to blame him for our problems. I manipulated the situation so that it become all about me, when indeed our struggles were intended to be experienced as a couple. And in doing so, I not only fail to fix our problems, but I create new ones, by putting the blame on my husband. But thank God for Grace. Thank God that I have a husband that understand I am a sinful creature, and a Savior who has already paid for my wicked ways.

See, it is in these moments of Grace through your spouse that the Gospel comes alive. It is in knowing that you are loved and forgiven regardless of how bad you screw up that marriage is the sweetest. I pray for more struggles in my marriage that result in a closer unity between my husband and I. I pray that in this I am sanctified, and no longer feel the urge to run away from my husband when times are hard, but rather that I run fast to him. Though marriage is a constant fight against the will of self, I will gladly fight knowing that God promises so much more out of marriage than I have yet to realize.