In church today, we met up with a young couple that are the daughter and son-in-law of the music minister. They were married perhaps 6 weeks ago and are very happy, but also discovering that marriage is very, very different from dating!  They had attended Family Life's "Weekend to Remember" as an engaged couple and we were talking about their attending it again now that they're married. 

The young bride said, "Things that never bothered me at all are really starting to bug me.  We're in such a different place now, I'm sure that the conference will speak to us in a much different way."  For those of us that have been married for a while (or a long while) we chuckle a little.  We can easily remember back to those early days of struggle we experienced, and perhaps from time to time still experience!

I shared a thought with her, "When we're single, it's like we get to wear many different pairs of shoes.  We have different roles and relationships in life that we're changing in and out of, so if one bugs us, it's no big deal switch out to another pair.  But when we're married we've narrowed things down to  one pair of work boots that we wear every day.  If they start to chaff or we get a little stone in them, it's important to attend to it early not let it rub us until we're raw." 

Marriage is always a challenge.  We are in very close proximity, in good times and through difficult situations.  We come to know our mate's strengths and weaknesses more than anyone else's on earth.  When one of their idiosyncracies or weaknesses starts to bug us, we have a choice to make… magnify it and let it build until we're raw and blistered over it, or work to resolve the issue or come to acceptance about it. 

The operative word is work at it.  Great marriages don't happen by an accident of fate, they are built one conflict resolved at a time, one challenge overcome together at a time, one day of frustration and irritation worked through, one decision to love, one decision of compromise and one decision to give the benefit of the doubt at a time.  True, lasting love isn't a feeling, it's a decision that we make day after day, week after week, year after year.  The amazing thing is that when we choose to love… more often than not, the feelings of love stay strong and even grow.

When we were early in our marriage 12 years ago, Steve and I read a Reader's Digest article together (we read out loud to each other all the time, I highly recommend it to help you draw together).  This article was from a woman who was celebrating her 45th Anniversary and was asked her secret for a successful marriage. 

She replied, "Early in our marriage, my husband and I decided that each of us only had 3 flaws and determined that we would never list the 3 flaws at one time.  So whenever he got on my nerves or let me down, I would say "It's only one of his three flaws!"  We laughed, but we also adopted the attitude and it may sound silly, but it works!  Our children are so familiar with our saying that they complete it for us before we have a chance.  They've learned that Dad isn't perfect, but Mom appreciates who he is as a man and makes sure that they do to. 

When I leave frozen food out on the counter because I was distracted by my computer, decided to check my email and never made it back to the kitchen, my husband picks up the half-melted food and puts it back in the refrigerator saying, "It's only one of her three flaws."

When my husband says, "I'll mow the yard until it gets dark and then come in for dinner."  I begin dinner and when he doesn't come in until 9 PM (we have 5 acres of mountainside and meadow) and dinner's stone cold I laugh and say, "It's only one of your three flaws!"  Then I warm dinner up in the microwave and the issue is over. 

It helps us to focus on the positive characteristics that we each have rather than the areas that we lack.  Some of our areas of lack are simply not possible to be changed… the artist (me) is never going to be the organized, on-top-of-everyone's-schedule mom… EVER!!!!  My creative, wonderfully-sensitive husband is NEVER going to be the super-CPA-every-bit-of-business-super-organized-and-accounted-for kind of a husband — and I wouldn't trade who he is for who he isn't! 

Accepting one another's limitations and in many ways minimizing those that aren't life-damaging (we're not talking about abusiveness or destructive behaviors here) is one of the ways that we "break in the boots" and make them comfortable, hard-working, and functional.  Think about it for a moment, for a ball, a pair of sparkling, diamond-studded glass slippers might be quite cute, and that's a little like what dating is like.  But for getting things done in life, a great, comfortable pair of boots will beat them out every day of the week… the same is true of a great mate!  

Audrey Jeanne Roberts