Date Night

Well, I’ve been married to this guy for a long time. I met him in Zoology class. He had arrived early to class to take a quick nap, and I inadvertently woke him up as I sat in the desk next to him.

We dated for a long time, five years, before we got married. This coming May, we will have been married 24 years. 

We read a lot of books about marriage when we were engaged and in those first years of marriage. We were determined to “do it right”.

Some of those books were helpful. Some of those books were trash. We stopped reading books on marriage as the years went by, not because we had “mastered” the marriage thing and no longer needed help. Ha! Quite the opposite. We stopped because we realized there was really only one book about marriage. The Book. 

There are verses that pertain to marriages and the Song of Solomon is frequently used in churches as the spine for marriage classes. We’d done those Bible studies and they are excellent.

But we also just studied the Bible in general, together as a couple and also with other groups, other friends. The more I study about God, His Son, the Holy Spirit, and the more I follow Him, the better I am. The closer I am to Christ, the better my marriage is. I can only be the person that I need to be in my marriage if I walk closely with Christ.

“Two are better than one,

    because they have a good return for their labor: 

If either of them falls down,

    one can help the other up.

But pity anyone who falls

    and has no one to help them up.

Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm.

    But how can one keep warm alone?

Though one may be overpowered,

    two can defend themselves.

A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.” Ecc 4: 10-12

God is that third strand, and I am the weak strand. He strengthens me, disciples me, leads me, rebukes me. I know without a shadow of a doubt that my marriage would be in shambles if I didn’t commit to following Him first, before I committed to my husband.