Beware - Marriages Don’t Come with Instructions

Marriage is a Pandora’s Box, a Tower of Babel--to use a biblical expression. It was never designed to be the panacea of personal satisfaction. God has more in his sights for our learning in the institution of marriage--the person of God has an ‘interesting’ sense of humour it seems.

This comes of no surprise to those married for some time. They can afford a tongue-in-cheek smile for they’ve been exposed to, and have largely conquered, the challenges. They’ve had to modify their various modus operandi and trim their views.

Marriage is a quest of discernment--begin it and continue to live, better and better; kick against it and we struggle until we’re spat out, as if by allusion to Laodicean methodologies.

Furthermore, children (and the raising of them) come without instructions. We see many parents get the task of parenting horribly wrong, notwithstanding ourselves. Jeepers, I’ve made some real clangers (and continue to!).

Still, we must learn. Thrive and survive or wallow and perish. It requires compromise but not in values or beliefs. The compromise is at the heart level, the surrendering of the will. Furthermore, it’s said that the husband must surrender his heart to love his wife, and the wife must surrender her will to respect her husband. A universal law it seems.

Marriage, like raising children, is a ‘learn as you go’ proposition. Early in marriage we still have the “Probationary” plates on, having proceeded to the Wedding on the “Learner” plates. Heck, we still feel like we’re on learner plates at times, in seasons. Ask the man with the 43-year-old marriage and wife that’s just walked out if he’s learning anything new? Or ask the woman in her very early 60s if she’s learning anything with her husband taken from her twenty years early.

Life is a ‘learn as you go’ proposition. The quicker we understand and accept that truth humbly the better we’ll actually begin to enjoy and interact with life.