How strong is your marriage? You might be quick to say that it’s as strong as it has ever been.
However, it sometimes takes stress in a marriage to reveal if there are any cracks in the foundation. When things are going along smoothly, of course it feels strong. But what happens when the heat is on?
Throughout my 21 years of marriage, I can say that it’s taken stress to reveal some of our cracks. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
Because if you don’t know they exist, the foundation could begin to crumble without you even realizing it. At least if you know there are cracks, you can set out to fix them.
For instance, many years ago when I miscarried one of our children, that stress revealed some cracks in our marriage. Through it we learned to not have expectations of how each one will deal with a tragedy.
In other words, just because I handle a situation one way doesn’t mean my husband has to handle it the same, and vice versa. We learned that it’s okay to be different in how we cope with loss.
It was just a few months ago when we experienced some great difficulties with one of our teens that more cracks were revealed. We learned some painful, but necessary lessons in parenting.
There have been so many other stressors in our marriage that when I think back, I see how important it was that the cracks be revealed. When you choose to ignore issues in your marriage and sweep them under the rug, you are only delaying the inevitable.
If you fail to fix the cracks, the foundation will eventually break. It will be much, much harder to rebuild from that. So why not take care of the cracks as soon as you see them?
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