The Honeymoon Phase

My marriage is awesome.
Yes, there are moments that we don't really like each other and we disagree. There are times I wish he would put down the video game controller and stop talking to his friends across the country and talk to me. There are times he wishes I would stop asking for a cat and overreacting at his playful jabs. Overall, though, our marriage is really awesome. He's my best friend in the world, he's the funniest person I know, and he is incredibly patient and loving.

We've been married a short six months, and we find that we run into the same reactions over and over whenever we talk about our brand-new adventure of a marriage.

If we talk about how our marriage has been challenging and stretching and at times difficult, people tell us about how we haven't seen difficult yet. They tell us how we haven't been together long enough to even know what a fight can be like. Add our short marriage to our young age, and people basically assume we have never been through rough times.

If we talk about how our marriage has been wonderful, encouraging, inspiring and lovely, people laugh at us and tell us we're still in the "honeymoon phase" and we haven't even had time to have problems yet. They tell basically tell us that within a certain time frame, we will lose interest in each other, come to a place where things naturally decline and get a reality check

I'm pretty positive that the majority of these people don't mean any harm, but as a young newlywed, it's really hard to hear that things are going to get worse. Or that our struggles and hardships are not justified, not enough. Not enough bad. Not enough good. That's what we hear: that our marriage is not good enough.

The part that gets me the most is when people say we haven't been together long enough to say that we are truly happy. People have this assumption that the first couple months are supposed to be magical and the rest is just average. But as my beautiful friend Lauren pointed out to me (I love her wisdom), "God doesn't refer to the Church as the wife of Christ but the bride, implying that they are in the honeymoon stage FOREVER."

And I like that imagery. I like knowing that my honeymoon phase never has to end. God intended marriage to be a beautiful, wonderful, life-giving thing. He created me to share my life with Robert. He created my personality with Robert's personality in mind.

God didn't create marriage so that we would have a great first year together and then fall into a slump. He wants our marriage to always be the best relationship we experience on this earth. I'm so thankful to know that He desires for us to have an amazing, full of love, intimate bond that won't fizzle out just because we have a rough day.

If you're married, whether it's been for 6 months or 60 years, please be encouraged that the honeymoon phase never has to end.