The Older Years: Getting It Together

"Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who wants to live in an institution?" So go the jokes about marriage. Aside from the weather, marriage probably receives as much attention as any single subject. The reason is simple: most everybody is married.

You have to work at marriage to make it work. You can't just wind it up and watch it run. It requires attention if it is to be all God wanted it to be when He ordained it. Young marriages need attention simply because they are new. Middle-aged marriages have to be carefully managed to assure that they are going in the right direction. People who have been married a long time have to be careful that the relationship doesn't stagnate and lose its appeal.

When you are young you go together, when you are old you grow together. It's as simple as that. The principle I believe to be most lacking in marriages young, middle-aged, or old is growth. It actually includes most of the other problem areas in most troubled marriages communication, sex, and money. We emphasize that marriage is one man for one woman for life, and well we should, for that is God's design for it. But faithfulness and longevity are not the only things involved in marriage. Marriages need to grow. The couple that grows together is much more apt to stay together. Lack of growth puts a marriage in serious jeopardy and usually points toward unhappiness at the least and separation at the worst.

Growth indicates acceptable progress. It usually comes in small degrees rather than in spurts (cancer is actually growth out of control). In the marriage relationship, growth means that the husband and wife are making spiritual progress. Actually, it is sinful not to grow spiritually (Heb. 6:1; 1 Pet. 2:2, etc), and I aver that making marriage work is as much a spiritual enterprise as is baptism or studying to show yourself approved to God. When a marriage relationship becomes stale, stagnant, it's usually because there is no movement in it, no direction, no progress.

Actually, the principles for the older marriage remaining strong and vibrant are the same as those for the young marriage. They begin at the first and never do change. There are several of them. I will cite just three.

Make you love for one another grow. That's right, love has to grow. Love isn't something you fall into and that's the end of it. It has to make progress or it isn't real love. Recall the dating years. How far have you come? Has your love grown, or has it become dormant, stale? Has it gained a kind of mature quality, or is it still just erotic love? Selfish love, like that seen in erotica, should progress toward the selfless variety, like that seen in agape love. You can examine the progress of your love for one another by measuring your growth in: 1) faithfulness, trustworthiness do you have more and more confidence and respect for your mate as you go along? 2) tolerance and forbearance have you grown to the extent that you look for ways to forgive rather than for ways to accuse? 3) appreciation and respect has your honest regard for your mate gotten better as you've gone along, do you appreciate what he or she brings to the relationship, and do you have a higher regard for your mate now than when you first were married? 4) enjoyment and pleasure is there a richer, deeper kind of humor in your marriage now, and do you have a sort of unity in what you both consider to be valuable and necessary?

Realize, fulfill, and grow in your role. The husband who fulfills his role as spiritual head of the house makes the relationship healthy and happy. The wife who truly submits to her role as the husband's companion and helper brings a kind of unity and stability to the marriage. Together, they make marriage a happy and functional union. When these roles are not carefully attended to, the marriage flounders, the roles become ambiguous, ill-defined, and the chances of failure are increased substantially. Of all the problem areas in unstable marriages, failure of role functions is one of the largest contributors. That's as true in the golden years of marriage as in the younger years. The husband must be the husband; the wife must be the wife. When that law of order is disrupted there is only confusion and unsteadiness.

Make love the basis for all you do. When love is the energy for all your actions, when it is the prime mover of all that you do, when all your intentions are motivated by it, the result will be good. Love provides a good atmosphere for marriage. Love provides a satisfactory atmosphere for acceptable disagreement, for carefully designed and lovingly articulated discipline, for caring expressions of kindness. I said acceptable disagreements, because there are times for legitimate disagreements. And that's healthy, so long as love is present. Carefully designed and lovingly articulated discipline, I said. You will find that correction is best accepted when it is lovingly presented. And caring expressions of kindness are made appreciably better when they come from a heart of love. Read I Corinthians 13 as it relates to you and see yourself when it says love is patient, kind, not envious, not puffed up, not easily provoked, etc. I said see yourself when you read it. No matter how long you've been married, it will make the relationship better.

Growing old together is fun. Actually, it's what marriage is all about. Solomon said that to "live joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest all the days of thy life..." is one of the joys of life. I have been married to my Norma many years now. We've kind of grown up together. We've reared our kids together, agonized over our bills together, fussed about things together, dug in the flowerbeds together, helped one another bury our parents, enjoyed our friends together, laughed together, and cried together. But most of all, we've grown together. It just gets better as you grow along, folks.