Holy Matrimony: It’s all Roses

This post is part of the Happy Wives Club Blog Tour which I am delighted to be a part of along with hundreds of inspiring bloggers. To learn more and join us, CLICK HERE!  The Happy Wives Club has inspired me to start my first ever Blog Series, Holy Matrimony!  

Have you ever noticed all the negativity that surrounds marriages in our culture? When we got engaged, we were “warned” about marriage on every turn.  “Oh, you’re in love now, but wait until you get married.” “Yup, you’re in the honeymoon phase, wait til that ends! You’ll see.”  Even to this day people constantly tell me about the horrors of marriage after kids, or after this or that.  It’s enough to crush every little girl’s fairytale dreams of someday meeting prince charming and living happily ever after. Well, I’m here to proclaim, the dream is alive and well!! Fairytales do exist. Of course, you must remember that Prince Charming was a human, which means he wasn’t perfect.
 

I must say that I’m so blessed to have never experienced the negativity associated with marriage until I was an adult! I was raised by two happily married, loving parents.  Growing up in a loving home with them made me desire marriage VERY much!  I never thought they were perfect but I did think they were great and I knew they loved each other.  They were clearly best friends and I wanted that when I grew up beyond a shadow of a doubt. As far as I knew, marriage was a wonderful thing that everyone desired.  However, when I got to college, I started meeting girls that said things like, “Eh, I don’t plan on getting married.  Who needs that?” At first it was shocking but eventually it began to sink in that perhaps everyone didn’t have what my parents had and that made me sad. 

I never lost sight of what a lovely thing marriage is and was beyond excited when Josh proposed!! We had both heard enough marriage horror stories that we didn’t waste any time getting into premarital counseling.  As a matter of fact we went through premarital counseling at two different churches (his and mine) with 3 different people (can you tell I really believe in preparing). We were confident that we would “live happily ever after” but we never expected marriage to be all roses.

 

Now that we are 2 ½ years in and I reflect back, I’ve decided that… marriage is all roses! Roses make me so happy (as does marriage).  They are beautiful, fragrant, and the perfect addition to any centerpiece but they do have thorns! And boy do thorns hurt.  Everyone knows that but we don’t run and burn all the rose gardens in town because the roses have thorns.  NO! Of course not.  We learn how to deal with the thorns (hopefully by removal) so that we can enjoy the beauty of the roses.  That is how I see marriage.  It is absolutely wonderful but there will be some thorns.  All we have to do is learn how to deal with the thorns.

Fawn Weaver, the founder of the Happy Wives Club wrote a book about the best marriage secrets the world has to offer. They say the book is like “Eat, Pray, Love meets The 5 Love Languages.” I say the book is inspiring. You can grab a copy HERE.

 

Linking up with Doing You Well Wednesdays, All Things Thursday.