DAILY DEVOTIONAL

Marriage in the Ordinary Days

Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves. — Romans 12:10

Most marriages are not lived in dramatic moments. They are lived in ordinary days. Somebody is tired. Somebody forgot to buy milk. There are bills, dishes, appointments, work, family problems, and a hundred small decisions that do not look romantic at all. Yet those ordinary days are where a marriage is usually built or slowly neglected.

Love changes over the years. The excitement that begins a relationship is wonderful, but it cannot carry a marriage by itself. Devotion is different. Devotion keeps showing up. It learns the other person's worries, habits, hopes, and scars. It chooses the relationship again when life is not especially exciting.

One of the easiest mistakes is to become polite to everybody except the person we married. We thank strangers, smile at coworkers, and then speak sharply at home because we are tired. Familiarity can make us careless. A marriage needs courtesy too. Please, thank you, I am sorry, how was your day, are small words with surprising power.

Arguments will happen. The goal cannot be to never disagree. The goal is to learn how to disagree without destroying safety and respect. Do not threaten the marriage every time you are angry. Do not drag every old failure into tonight's problem. Stay with the issue. Lower the volume. If you need a break, take one and come back.

Marriage also needs friendship. Couples can become excellent managers of a household and forget how to enjoy each other. Sit somewhere without solving a problem. Take a walk. Laugh at something stupid. Remember what you liked about each other before life became a schedule. Friendship gives a marriage somewhere soft to land.

There are situations that need outside help. If the same wound keeps reopening, if communication has completely broken down, or if trust has been seriously damaged, asking for counseling is not an admission that the marriage is hopeless. It may be an act of courage. And where abuse or danger exists, safety must come first.

Pray for your spouse, especially when you are irritated with them. It is difficult to pray sincerely for somebody and keep seeing them only as the problem. Ask God to show you your own part too. Marriage gets healthier when two people stop keeping score long enough to ask what each of them can do differently.

Do not wait for an anniversary to invest in your marriage. Do something small today. Send the kind text. Put the phone away at dinner. Ask a real question and listen to the answer. Touch their shoulder when you walk past. Ordinary love, repeated for years, becomes something strong. Most good marriages are built exactly that way.