If you’ve never been married before or you’re just freshly married, you may be surprised by how much work a great marriage takes. In fact, you may be surprised that the happily ever after takes work at all. We’ve talked about happily ever after and the work a marriage takes and we’ve talked about the fact that there is no such thing as a perfect marriage or a perfect spouse.
What there are, however, are perfect moments.
What is a Perfect Moment?
A perfect moment is that time when everything just seems to fall into place. You can achieve a perfect moment when your eyes meet across the room at a crowded party. You can achieve that perfect moment the first time you see a sonogram of the child you created together. You can achieve that perfect moment standing in line at the grocery store as you notice a headline or an item in the grocery cart.
Our lives are populated by these carefree, artless moments and they can be as fleeting as they are precious. But when you collect and savor these moments, you are giving your marriage a very necessary injection of romance, happily ever after and more – all without the fairy godmother waving her magic wand.
There is an analogy I read somewhere that you should treat your marriage like you treat your garden. Pull out the weeds, keep the hedges trimmed, protect it from insects and disease and savor the beauty of it all. I am particularly fond of this analogy and I grow roses in my garden. There are red roses, yellow roses, purple roses and orange roses and the best roses with the best scent have some of the sharpest thorns.
Marriage is like that – you have these perfect moments, sweet and perfumed and wonderful and other moments where the thorns stab at your fingertips. The good and the bad – I don’t think I can imagine marriage any other way and I don’t want it any other way either. The thorns make the rose all that much sweeter.
What do you think?