Marriage is . . .

As many of you know, I have dedicated a year of my life to studying love and marriage. Relationships and myself. I have dedicated a year to getting to the bottom of what it is that creates a healthy marriage and coincidentally a healthy home for my children. 

And over the past few days I've been wondering, what is marriage? 

Here's what I have come up with, from the mind of a never-been-married child who still has much to learn and can only hope to someday have what I have discovered over the past 7 months. 

Marriage is a list of vows. Vows are promises. Marriage is a list of promises. But really marriage is quite simply a promise. 

It is a promise to grow together, to understand and accept change in one another. To hope for the best and prepare for the worst in each other. 

It is a promise to share life with the other, to get excited about the little things, and also about the big. 

Marriage is a promise to make mature decisions about the other. To remember that you are not the only person who matters now [not that you ever were]. It is a promise to think of the other when making life altering decisions. 

It is a promise to treat your spouse as you would like to be treated. To listen to the other person, to talk at no end all about life, love, your dreams, and your fears with the person whom you have chosen to spend your life with. 

A promise to spend your life with that person. You have chosen this person, that one, out of the billions of people on this Earth - you chose them - and you promised that they would be more important than any other. Promised. 

It is a promise to make plans together, to laugh together, to cry together, to cheer each other on, to search out every nook and cranny in the other. A promise to respect the other, to love the other, to value the other - even in their imperfections. 

Marriage is a promise to forgive even the most unforgivable in the other. Because we are human, we will fail. We do fail. Every day. You promised to love the failures and to pick each other up no matter how far you fell. 

A promise to inspire hope in each other. To pursue God together. To pursue life together. To take a genuine interest in what the other would like to do forever, because you promised to be a part of that forever, together. 

It is a promise to recommit when you have found yourself truly separated from one another. To look upon the ways you have failed each other and remember the vows you took on day one - to come back to that love. To take one step forward, and then two, and then three - toward the future you both want. 

It is a promise to remember that this is your best friend. The one who looked you in the eye on the day you wed and said "till death do us part." 

It is a promise that no matter how fun the outside world is, nothing could be better than growing closer to your partner each year and looking back on all of the times you almost failed. A promise to try your hardest because crying yourself to sleep through the hard times is worth the laughter and the love during the good times. 

A promise to remember how much life would truly stink without that person around. A promise to remember that no matter how green your neighbors lawn looks, they have the same grass as you - they just might have taken better care of it. 

So you're promising to water your grass, to cut your grass, and to watch that green grass grow with GLORY.

Because at the end of your life, when you look across the table at the person you gave yourself to years ago, you will see the person who knows you better than anyone, who loves you further than anyone ever will, whose seen you at your worst as well as at your best. 

The person who never walked away from you.
because they made a promise . . .

 . . . and kept it.