If You Marry, Get Ready for Troubles

Happily ever after…

That’s what we hope marriage will be on that long-anticipated day when we walk down the aisle. But it doesn’t take most of us long to figure out that’s a myth.

Not even the Bible promises “happily ever after.” In 1 Corinthians 7:28 the Apostle Paul says that we will have "trouble" if we marry. Those troubles are inevitable. If you marry, get ready for troubles.

God desires that we all live in harmony, but that doesn’t mean we will live in an environment free from all conflict or trouble. It is how we deal with those troubles that will either lead to harmony or sin.

If we do not accept the inevitability of some trouble as part of God’s design, we may fall for the idea that marriage should be happily ever after. And then when troubles do come, we conclude that we are not receiving what we deserve. Have we been dealt an unfair hand? Is God against us?

When these moments come, how will we deal with them?

A friend of my daughter Joy captures this. Let’s hear from Lesley Miller who shares with transparency the trouble she and her husband Jonathan recently went through:

My life changed rapidly one afternoon last fall. I’d been pacing the house waiting for Jonathan’s phone call about his test results. And when it came, and he said “Cancer,” I collapsed into my chair and fell apart.

I remember sobbing the tears that don’t let you catch your breath; the kind that make you gasp for air and wail in such a way you don’t recognize your own primal sounds. Rocking back and forth, I stared at the blackboard on our kitchen wall. It read, “Sun is shining, weather is sweet, makes you want to move your dancing feet.” I’d written the Bob Marley lyric in August, after I’d given birth to Anna. We’d been living in a dizziness of warmth since her arrival that I’d never felt before, and certainly didn’t think would end so abruptly… Click here for Lesley’s entire story...

~Emerson