Devotion

It says in Proverbs 5:18-19:

Let your fountain be blessed, and rejoice in the wife of your youth. A loving doe, a graceful deer, may her breasts satisfy you always, may you be intoxicated always with her love.

Every marriage eventually reaches the disillusionment stage, when reality sets in. Expectations are not met, hopes are unfulfilled. It is easier at this stage to believe that what we don’t have must be better than what we do; but the grass is not greener. It is a trick of the eye - or more to the point a trick of the heart and mind. It plays upon that aspect of human nature that always wants what it doesn’t – or can’t – have. Humans tend to be lazy, to not want to do the work required to transform what we have into what we want; especially if that involves changing ourselves.

When we took our vows though, we said some variation of “Until death do us part.” If we meant what we said, then we must remain devoted to our spouse, committed to making the marriage we have work – for both people! When our devotion wanes, when we start to believe the lie that it is better “out there,” we stop enjoying our life. That runs counter to what Solomon writes in Ecclesiastes 9:9.

Enjoy life with the wife whom you love, all the days of your life that are given you under the sun.

I've heard it said that "women marry men thinking the men will change – and they don’t - while men marry women thinking the women won’t change – and they do." It is important for everyone to accept their spouse for who they are, and not pine for who they were, or yearn for who they could be. Love your spouse for who they are each minute - for all their virtues sure, but also with all their quirks and flaws. In Mark Twain’s “Diaries of Adam and Eve” both protagonists come to this conclusion in their own way.

Eve writes “The garden is lost, but I have found him, and am content.” She then goes on for pages trying to figure out why she loves Adam, listing many of his qualities and stating that she admires him and is proud of him for these - but they are not why she loves him. She states finally, “I think I love him because he is masculine, and he is mine.” He is Adam, and for her that is enough.

Adam, being a guy, comes to his epiphany in far fewer words. At her grave he remarks, “Wheresoever she was, there was Eden.”

If you have drifted, take the time to once again DEVOTE yourself to your spouse. Recognize that God put the two of you together for a reason, and do everything in your power to make the best of what you’ve been given. Do it well, and the grass on the “other side of the fence” will look far less green.