LOVE IS WORTH FIGHTING FOR.

Ephesians 4:32

Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.

The other day as I was catching up with a dear friend, who is single, and she sat in the car and told me, “You and Stephen just have the perfect marriage, I hope to find that one day.”  I just laughed and said “Are you kidding me?”  Perfect?  Far from it.  We’re married.  That statement alone means there are ups and downs and good and bad and for better and for worse.  She went onto say how she loves following our lives on social media and seeing our picture perfect life and how in love we are and how inspiring it is… and while I want her to be inspired and know that true love is worth the wait….I also want her to know that true love also is worth fighting for.  Because no love is perfect.  Love is a continual growing process.  It is a continual sacrifice of selfishness, of putting someone’s needs above your own, of his ways vs my ways, of compromise, and all the un-picture perfect things that no one shares on social media.

I was telling her the story of my lesson learning what a facade Facebook can be.  I had an old girlfriend from high school who I had lost touch with, yet, we were Facebook friends, and I would check in from time to time to see how happy and beautiful her family had grown.  I was so happy to see her so happy.  Finally we reached out beyond Facebook to get together to catch up.  As we met in person, I learned that those super glossy smiley family photos I was complimenting her on?  Those were the result of the absolute worst time in their family’s life after a year of separation from her husband, and they were currently in a phase of trying to rebuild and forgive, so they took the family photos as part of their attempt to heal that messy moment in their marriage.  I remember being in shock.  And of course my heart broke for her.  And it was my wake up call to what a facade Facebook can be.

The hardest lesson I have learned from our 2 years of marriage is how much marriage is a reflection of my own personal walk with Jesus.  Marriage requires constant forgiveness.  It requires accountability and choosing to keep things in the light, not the dark.  It requires daily communication.  It requires choosing to be a reflection of Christ’s love to the other person, even more so in those moments where you really don’t want to.  It requires trusting someone else with all your vulnerabilities, and hoping they still choose to love you despite how many times you fail to give a perfect love to them.  And when it can feel impossible to forgive your spouse, those are the exact moments Christ wants to remind us that it’s most important to forgive because the bottom line is….. He forgave us.  How can we know that and not extend the same grace to our partner in life?  I am so thankful for that grace.  His absolutely amazing grace.

And the greatest lesson I’ve learned about marriage is that, in the end, it’s worth fighting for until the end.  This lesson I learned from watching my parent’s marriage play out until the end.  They had many up and time moments throughout their 34 years of marriage.  I watched so many times how God had to completely shatter them apart in order to restore and rebuild.  And despite all the broken moments…. I have never seen a love more beautiful than between them the last 8 months of my dad’s life.  In those closing moments of their love story, I witnessed that love is completely worth fighting for.  To be able to hold someone’s hand until their last breath.  To look back over the story of their love and know they lived their love to the fullest.  To know that each time they forgave, it was brought with so many more beautiful memories that they what wouldn’t have been able to experience had they taken the easy way out to run away.  To see that in the end moments of life, what’s important is not what you have accomplished or how much money you made, but what is important is how strongly you loved and made a difference in the life of someone else through your love.  And in the natural moments of marriage where disagreements happen, where hurts happen, where confrontation happens and the last thing I want to do is keep my vows I made to my husband, I close my eyes and think of watching my parents fight for their love until the very last breath, and the legacy of forgiveness they set before me.  That is the perfect marriage I want people to know Stephen and I have, not something glossy they see on social media.  That our marriage is not perfect because we are perfect and appear to be fairy tale like, but that our love is built on perfect forgiveness and grace just as Christ forgave us individually first.

And while I know not every marriage is redeemable, if you have come from a broken one, my greatest hope is that you too can one day be in a marriage that is braided together with three strands: you, your spouse and Christ.  Because a cord of three strands can not be easily broken (Ecclesiastes 4:12)

Before getting married, I saw a movie that completely left a huge impact in my life of the kind of marriage I hoped to have one day… one that fights for each other… that doesn’t give up when all signs point to the door… and one that is fireproof.  If you haven’t seen this movie, whether married or single, I highly recommend it, even with all it’s cheesiness.