Worth the Work

Shorty has not been coming home during his lunch hour this school year. It is easier for both him and me because of our homeschooling routine. So I pack him a lunch-- usually leftovers-- and we don't see him until five most evenings. But I've been thinking the last week or so that I wanted to put a note or card in his lunch bag, so while I was at the store today I looked for one. I thought it was SO SAD though as I perused the shelf... Nearly half of the cards were labeled "Troubled Love". It just seems like there must be a pretty bad trend in marriages if card companies are marketing occasion cards for troubled love. =(
I started thinking about my own marriage. I love my Shorty more than any other person on the planet-- but we had some REALLY bumpy early days... We have both worked hard on different occasions to love one another, and adjust to life together. And I don't know many couples who say that marriage is not a lot of work. But it is WORTH THE WORK!!! =)

Here's a link to another amazing session from the Gospel Coalition's 2012 Women's conference:

Marriage in Gospel Focus

The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, "This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man." Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.
Genesis 2:20-24

And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, "Is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause?" He answered, "Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, 'Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh'? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate."
Matthew 19:3-6

Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. "Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh."
Ephesians 5:22-31