With Valentine’s Day quickly approaching, there are a lot of weddings on the calendar. Are you prepared to tie the knot or just really excited about your wedding day?
Let’s be proactive instead of reactive when it comes to marriage. We often prepare for “the wedding” but not the marriage. Marriage is so much more than wedding dresses, tuxedos, and the word “love.” Love has to be built on something stronger.
A marriage will only last if it’s intentionally built on a solid foundation of transparency, trust, and communication. Before you say “I do,” have you considered that once the wedding is over – that’s when the marriage begins?
Prepare for a Marriage That Outlasts the Wedding
Here are some questions to ask yourself to determine if the relationship is on solid ground or if you are headed for quicksand.
- Have you both gotten help to deal with “your stuff” from the past? We’ve all experienced some relationship trauma in our lifetime; the problem is we didn’t deal with it to heal from it. We often think we’re okay without dealing with our issues, so we move on. The truth is what you haven’t addressed will keep addressing you. Remember, you are bringing all of you to the marriage and nothing changes if nothing changes.
- Have you had a real conversation with your future spouse? If you can’t have the hard conversations now, these conversations will be a major issue in the marriage later. How were they raised and who raised them? What is their vision for the marriage? What is their definition of love? What is non-negotiable in the marriage? Be clear about what would end the marriage without question. If you are afraid to ask the hard questions, or he or she has a problem answering them, you are not on a solid foundation and this will cause problems down the road.
- Have you forgiven everyone in your past? How we do one thing is how we do everything. If you can’t forgive those from the past, you’ll have trouble forgiving him or her in your future. You will have to forgive often throughout your marriage because no one is perfect. With unforgiveness comes grudges, with grudges comes resentment, with resentment comes animosity, with animosity comes separation, and with separation comes the “D” word.
- Are you equally yoked? I’m not talking about being churchy or religious. I’m talking about whether or not your morals and values connect. What is most important to him? What is most important to her? Have you even discussed core values? Core values, next to God, will be the center of your marriage. What does that look like for each of you? I’ve given some examples below because so many people don’t even know what core values are.
Have you discussed your core values?
Here are some examples of core values that people might have about life, including:
- A belief, or lack thereof, in God or an affiliation with a religious/spiritual institution
- A belief in being a good steward of resources and in exercising frugality
- A belief that family is of fundamental importance
- A belief that honesty is always the best policy and that trust has to be earned
- A belief in maintaining a healthy work/life balance, etc.
So, What’s the Play Call?
Marriage is a wonderful thing if it is as important as a beautiful wedding. The wedding will be over, and you will be married. How you start is how you ultimately finish.
So, be proactive instead of reactive and you can be on the road to success of a life of bliss forever.
About the Guest Contributor
Tray Kearney is a servant leader whose assignment is to help others heal from matters of the heart. She is known for her method of helping others heal through her transparency and truth. Her testimony of going through the storm of infidelity on both sides of not only being the offender but also the recipient of betrayal gives men and women the safe haven they need to be transparent and honest with themselves without judgment. Connect with Teammate Tray at www.traykearney.com
Todd Dulaney’s “Revelation 4” and Throne Worship
Reconciliation is the restoration of friendly relations. Humanity’s sin causes a ‘brokenness’ in our relationship with our Heavenly Father. Through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, God the Father offers us an opportunity to be restored to a right relationship with Him.
This is the question I posed to my 89-year-old grandfather who has been in a happy marriage for double my lifetime. He smiled a cheeky grin before he jokingly responded: “The secret is to stay married. You know I have been married for almost 68 years – to the same woman!”
According to my wise, old grandad, marriage is certainly worth every effort. It is growing old together, sharing life together, raising a family together, and having someone beside you, through the joys and hardships of life. Always.
You want my point, right? Well, no matter how ready I was to get started, though I’d paid for this subscription, and even though I had all the equipment I needed to crush these at-home workouts, I couldn’t because my phone’s software was outdated. I was in need of an update. 
I have learned and still am learning what God meant about a false balance and a just weight (Proverbs 11:1). God looks for His people to live in the fullness of His Word, not a filtered or edited version. That does not mean operating by the law, so to speak, but applying everything Jesus taught and practiced. This includes blessing our food. From feeding the five thousand to the Last Supper, our Lord always thanked The Father for His meals and sanctified them through prayer. And it was our same Jesus that worked mighty miracles to the Glory of God.
Have you ever been cruising on the highway – and then BAM! Out of nowhere, you hit a roadblock. Everything was smooth sailing, rocking to your favorite song. You were on schedule to reach your destination on time, now your GPS is covered in red flags. It’s a pain.
Take a deep breath, Teammates. I know that all you can see right now is confusion – how in the world could everything be going wrong, when you’re doing the right thing?
All of this business of write the vision sounds great, but what if you have no idea what to write? What if you don’t know what the vision is?
