Monday, April 27, 2009

Marriage is like a home improvement project that lasts forever!

Isn’t funny how our ‘feelings’ cycle for our spouses?
I can say that in 18 years of marriage, the ‘in love thing’ comes back around again and again, only DEEPER! I am so visually oriented that I see and understand everything with a picture. So my picture of our marriage growth is like a small old house that we have spent 18 years restoring, remodeling, adding onto rooms, beautifying the floors and woodwork, adding a master bedroom suite, adding a sun porch… you get the picture! Year by year, we work faithfully. It seems that the ‘new projects’ are never DONE, but we enjoy each step that is completed – each new room or beautiful color to live in and appreciate.

Sometimes the sheer WORK of it is overwhelming. Like when you look at a new project where three layers of wall paper need to be stripped and the walls re-plastered and smoothed from scratch. You sometimes want to run away from what you know will be a challenge, a choice to work ON PURPOSE for a season and “it won’t be pretty”! But the end result is so amazing!

Of course, you have to keep going back to the designer for instructions…daily, sometimes hourly! He has the big picture of what it will look like in the future, what purposes He has for each room and the masterful, creative skill to blow you away with the outcome.

To sum it up - every year that we INVEST only serves to make the marriage (house) more valuable! In times of flagging ‘feelings’ we say to ourselves, “We’ve got too much into this to ever leave it or give up!”