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. If you’re a blogger and want to join in, click here!  

What makes a happy marriage?

What would you say?

Not easy to answer, is it?

When each individual

Husband + Wife

is unique,

… and then two individuals decide to dedicate their moments, hours, days, months and years to a life together,

that’s a question with a million answers.

Most of us can only answer the question, “What makes our marriage happy?”

Robert and I have been together since we were 15 and 17.  (Yes, we were young.) We married four years later, and will celebrate 30 years in May 2014.

The highlights, in no particular order, of those 3 decades have included: 2 kids, 4 homes, 1 amazing dog, immigrating to another country, homeschooling, ministry, and businesses. (See, we’re pretty ordinary – I’m sure if you can’t echo our list, it’s quite close in texture.)

And, as I pondered these 30 years to determine what our “secret” is to a happy marriage, I narrowed it down to a list of 3 items. These intangibles have been evident over the years in varying degrees of constancy:

  • a willingness to embrace (calculated) adventure
  • accepting responsibility
  • learning to communicate (better)

However.

There is one item – not on this list of three –  that was there at the beginning…

when we were teenagers,

and still there when we celebrated our first wedding anniversary in the hospital with a 5-day old daughter,

and remained when Robert went back to University as we were parents of a new-born and a preschooler.

It was there when we decided to become the first homeschoolers in our circle of friends/acquaintances.  (Canada began a little later than the USA in the homeschooling movement.)

And this item was drawn upon with great emphasis when we immigrated to the USA, leaving behind our family, our friends, our support system, etc. etc. etc.

This item is a mainstay in ministry. We would be empty without it.

And it’s an integral part of business life, as husband and wife…

It’s the only thing that we can put our hope in as we enter 2014…

Our secret to a happy marriage is:

faith and trust in God

  • I know our marriage would not have been very happy if we chose to embrace past adventures without a shared faith in God… And cultivating happiness in our adventures in 2014 won’t be possible without that faith.
  • There’s a great chance that every accepted responsibility could have overwhelmed us without God as part of the equation. (Just accepting responsibility for our own actions/feelings/behavior is enough to daunt anyone.)
  • And communication… when you see husbands and wives in a winter season of marriage, you’ll see a break-down in communication with God first.

God remains constant.  God is our only constant.

Robert and I are human. We fail each other daily.

So, whenever everything has fallen apart,

when we feel like we’re living in a tragedy,

when reason’s rays deceptive shine,

our faith and trust in God keeps our marriage happy.

That’s our 30-year secret to a happy marriage. I have faith that it’ll continue to be the answer for the next 30…

How about you?

HWClub_SqBlogButnB

What’s the secret to your happy marriage?

row of hearts faded

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.