From the time I was a little girl, I’ve wrestled with mixed messages about relationships. On the one hand, there was the fairy-tale version that involved a great quest, a wicked enemy, a ballgown, true love’s kiss, and a lady being swept off her feet.  On the other hand, I saw real-life examples of broken vows, angry breakups, and heard a clear message of girl power.  Women who were themselves hurt by their choices and others, preached a message of independence and autonomy – I was told over and over, “you don’t need a man,” “never trust anyone,” and “look out for #1!”  When it comes to marriage matters, I’ve always had a jumble of messages to sort through, and the sorting and living out is vital… even before the wedding day.

 

The problem is, we humans were made to need each other.  It’s true, life isn’t just a fairy tale where you will meet that one person you can’t help getting googly eyed over, riding into the sunset to live happily-ever-after.  But our best history of the world and God’s plan in it, the Bible, shows us there is a lot we can learn from the idea of that fairy tale; in fact, it’s been said that the best fairy tales point us to the grand truths of life.

 

 

Marriage is more than a fairy tale.

In some ways it has all of the elements, but it goes way beyond the pages of fantasy.

 

Marriage does involve “true love.” Most often, there’s physical and emotional attraction, and all of this leads to “falling in love”. BUT where the movies (and our own bodies) might lead us to think we’re controlled by that emotional and physical attraction, the truth is we can choose to stay attracted, to draw near when we want to pull away and serve our own desires in the moment.  Even more, I believe we can set ourselves up for success in marriage when we train ourselves to take action in both expressing and reigning in our attraction long before we reach the marriage relationship.  We can practice self-control with both our emotions and our bodies as single people, and that practice builds strength for the needed choice to honor our spouse with our thoughts, our emotions, and our bodies, throughout our married life.

From the time we’re little we hear that we “Can’t help our feelings.”  I wish I had been taught differently.

 

The truth is, we choose whether or not to be controlled by feelings every day of our lives.  Not married?  I dare you, begin to practice that truth now. CHOOSE to feel love, kindness, commitment toward others.  CHOOSE to treat others as brothers and sisters in Christ… not just objects for feeding our emotional and physical pleasure.

Just like in a fairy-tale, marriage is a great adventure… but the hero and heroine gain their status from thousands of little moments of quiet faithfulness.

 

Marriage does have a hero and heroine.  Together they battle the dark forces of evil, literally out to get them and destroy a God-ordained picture for a watching world, of the kind of Love that made Him give His life for the salvation of mankind.

 

In his book Love and War, John Eldredge says:  “You live in a world at war. Spiritual attack must be a category you think in or you will misunderstand more than half of what happens in your marriage.”

 

The real-life hero and heroine in a marriage prove their hero-status with dogged commitment to stay faithful to each other.  With little choices like ignoring annoyances and saying no to distractions and choosing the good of another and with a huge decision: to yield to each other under a yielding to God, as they lead their own family in the order He ordained.

 

In marriage, too, whether you have physical or spiritual children, you lead your “kingdom” and serve together – influencing those around you for good!
In real-life, marriage requires sacrifice.  One of the hallmarks of true love is yieldedness to another’s best interest.  As Christians, our yieldedness is first to God, then to each other within the body of Christ.  Throughout the New Testament, God paints a picture of the specific type of yieldedness He calls for in marriage.  In Ephesians and elsewhere, husbands are called to lead sacrificially, and wives are called to submit to their leadership “as unto God.”  As we work out the specifics of that relationship personally, we paint a beautiful picture for a watching world, of the kind of love God has for us.  But if we fall to the tendency to put ourselves first, we damage our own heart, the heart of our spouse, and the portrait of Love we have the opportunity to represent.

 

Worship of “me” WILL ALWAYS FAIL US.

 

Want an honest admission?  I cannot live up to my own expectations.  I hold a high standard for my family and those I love around me… but I’m busy letting my own self down most of the time, quietly failing to meet my own standards.  So when I put “me first,” I risk causing misery for me and everyone around me.  And this is a truth my husband and I have learned the hard way:
ME-FIRST mentality hurts the team.
Here’s something we can hold onto, though (my women-friends, especially!) – the standards God holds us to are even higher.  And we can meet those standards… but only with His help.

 

And we needn’t worry about this submitted heart He asks us to have – because He has high standards for our spouses, too.  And He modeled for us what that kind of love looks like – along with the eternal, awe-inspiring, dancing-in-the-streets kind of freedom and joy it produces!  But again – we can only get that freedom by yielding ourselves completely, heart-mind-soul-strength, to Him.

 

No matter what mixed messages we’ve been fed, no amount of fury or fight will fix all the broken things in us and in those we love.  We have to move forward, give, sacrifice, grow, and sometimes step back, re-evaluate and create healthy boundaries, but it’s the yielding to God, the trust we build in Him to care for us, that produces beautiful fruit in our relationships.

This following comes from a post called Beauty in Gentleness, written by Christine Willard on The Edges Collective:

“Being married costs everything. Tears… Incredible vulnerability and sacrifice. It causes you to take a deeper look inside your heart and soul, your desires and your personality… It is not easy. But that does not come as a surprise to you. You already know that!… Of course loving costs everything–look at the Cross. But loving is always worth it…We all know that loving is hard. Marriage is hard. It is hard because it is opposed. The devil hates marriage… But God loves marriage!… He is for you… Marriage is going to ask everything of you, and that is why you must have a vision for it… We live in a great love story, set in the midst of war. We need each other–desperately. We have been entrusted with the heart of another human being. Our loving will prove to the world that love is real. We will play out before watching eyes the Great Love Story of the ages.”

How are you being challenged to live beyond the fairy tale?