What is marriage?

This week we’ve been celebrating our wedding anniversary and it got me thinking afresh about the unique, crazy yet wonderful institution that is marriage.

We’ve all heard the old joke that marriage is like an institution – borstal. But, while we can joke, there’s no doubting that marriage is an important subject to consider.

From the day we entered into our marriage, Gary and I have put, and kept, God at its centre. We believe He created the union of marriage with the creation of mankind and we trust that it was He who brought us together – and keeps us together – in that union. And, as the Bible tells us in Ecclesiastes 4:12, we know that a cord of three strands is not easily broken. Sometimes it might feel like our little family unit against the world but we know that all the time God is at its head and we are each with the person with whom He destined us to be we can – and will – come through.

Often we don’t know the strength of our marriages until something comes along to test them. And while hard times are not pleasant, those we have faced so far in our relatively short union have demonstrated clearly to me that I have been blessed with an amazingly loving and supportive husband and a God who helps us stand together when life’s circumstances could so easily tear us apart.

During and even before our marriage, Gary has stood alongside me through the toughest times of my life, and I have done the same for him. And while we, like any human beings, have at times experienced the same circumstance in differing ways, our unity has been that we have stood with each other and supported each other through whatever he or she has encountered in that, not that we have sought to make each other’s experiences directly mirror our own.

Neither of us is perfect. We have tough days, we snap at each other from time to time and we have been known to bicker about why we’ve run out of milk, because it was obviously the other person’s job to remember to buy some. But we have also lived together through some of the happiest and saddest moments of our lives, and I can say without a shadow of a doubt that there is nobody I would rather have had at my side in those times than Gary.

Marriage is a gift but it is also challenge; it just happens to be one that’s well worth taking on and constantly working on and for alongside the one you love.

1 Corinthians 13:13 tells us, “And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”