Marriage: Real Life Can Never Compete With Fantasy
Marriage is something that most girls dream about from childhood. Everyone loves the story of Cinderella to the point where we have coined the terms “A Cinderella Wedding” or “A Fairy Tale Wedding”
Likewise, young men dream of having the ideal wife with an ideal body all the days her life. The dream is of marrying this perfect person and living happily ever after.
It’s very hard to accept anything in real life other than the fairy tale union when such visions of perfection have been ingrained within us for so many years prior to marriage.
When real life slaps us in the face and we wake up next to Mr. or Mrs. imperfect, some people are left feeling a little disappointed.
A fantasy marriage is perfect, a real life marriage isn’t
None of us fantasize about going to the alter with the ugliest guy or girl in town.
We don’t have dreams of growing up and living in government assisted housing for the rest of our lives.
No one has ever imagined having the worst job and the worse car in the neighborhood and set out on a trek to make these dreams come true.
No, quite the contrary. When we dream, we dream about having the best. We imagine ourselves in nice cars, living in nice homes, and having the perfect spouse.
So when reality gives us a less than perfect car, a less than desirable house and a spouse that isn’t necessarily what we envisioned, we can be tempted to look at our lives and feel a little let down.
Marriage is definitely not Fairy Tale
Marriage is never about finding the perfect partner. There is no perfect partner. Marriage isn’t even about finding someone that you’re most compatible with.
Marriage is about finding the partner that is willing to allow God to mold and shape them individually and as a partner in the union that He is sanctioning.
If I could sum up marriage in one word it would be “yielding”. Yielding to one another and yielding to God. Submitting to one another as you both submit to the Lord is key to making a Christian marriage work.
As you yield to God and allow Him to create something beautiful between the two of you, you will look up one day and find that the imperfect person you married is still imperfect, but he or she is perfect for you and vise versa.
Have you ever had a key that would fit into a lock, but yet the key wouldn’t turn the lock to unlock the door? Couples who refuse to yield to one another and/or to God are like a key that fits into a lock, but are incapable of unlocking the door.
It takes God, our great locksmith to reshape and cut the keys of our lives and personalities so that they not only fit into the lock, but are able to turn and unlock the barriers within our marriages.
Unrealistic marriage fantasies kill marriages from the start
Folks, marriage is work. It’s work that doesn’t offer any vacation time. It doesn’t offer sick days, and the shifts run 24 hours per day with no days off.
Marriage is about finding a lump of coal and working together to create a diamond. When you both realize that you will have something precious at the end of the refining process, working together becomes enjoyable.
Get rid of the romance novel version of marriage
Your marriage will go through countless changes over the years. Likewise, your spouse will go through changes spiritually, emotionally and physically during the course of the marriage.
What do you do when changes occur in your marriage that are outside the scope of the fantasy union you had prior to your marriage?
How you respond will determine if you’re still chasing a fantasy or are ready and willing to put forth the effort to make your marriage work in the real world.
Trust God to make something beautiful of your marriage
The institution of marriage was created by God. Ask the Lord to bless your union. Trust Him to work miraculously in your marriage.
Pray for your spouse and come together in agreement that your union will be one that is an example of what God intended when He created the institution of marriage.
My prayer is that God will grant you a marriage that surpasses even your wildest dreams and that a union that began as just another Christian marriage heading for divorce court will be completely renewed and held up as an example of what the power of God can do, in Jesus Name!
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