Marriage is not easy. I’m just going to say that. Even the best ones are hard work. They’re messy and often distressingly inconvenient.  One in every two marriages ends in divorce today. Lots of folks don’t even try anymore. 

The thing about marriage, even the best one,  is that it’s just so damn daily. After the romance fades (and you think it never will….) you discover your spouse’s  faults, and foibles,  some a little more than annoying.  And they’re here to stay.  

 

Then there’s the first disagreement, that first tearful fight. Eventually someone makes a mistake, maybe a bad one. There’s friction in the family. Problems with a child or a parent.  Someone contracts a serious illness or loses a job.  We may question why we ever got married in the first place. 

 

And sometimes marriages have to die. But if we’re lucky, the marriage survives. Because we need each other, we need an anchor, a place to be, someone to be accountable to and responsible for. Because marriage is bigger than two people.

 

If we stay the course,  in  time we discover a love beyond the external, that bears little resemblance to that first giddy obsession. It matures into anchor, a compass.   We come to see that love is not a state of being, but a state of doing.  We find that love is, after all,  a verb.

 

And that marriage is just, well…..daily.