Marriage: The greatest gift a parent can give to his/her children is to love their spouse.
I love having deep and meaningful conversations individually with my sons, each of whom are now well experienced with life and have words of wisdom of their own. One son was sharing his observations that marriages often seem to falter at the beginning of the empty nest stage. He commented that often it is because the parents have been giving so much time to their children or to earning money to support the family, that they hadn’t given enough time to their relationship as a couple. This reminded me of a gem that has guided our married life. It goes like this,The greatest gift a parent can give to his/her children is to love their spouse. I recall Billy Graham quoting this in my younger days.
There are times when giving priority to our marriage relationship will involve a struggle to find time and even enthusiasm, but it is well worth it. I’m thankful that as a child I always knew that my parents loved each other. They shared stories of their courtship and, being a girl, I loved hearing about their war-time wedding when Mum looked beautiful and glowing in her second-hand wedding dress. Their wedding reception was held in the packing shed on the farm, which was transformed into a romantic reception hall by her family who decorated it with wild flowers gathered from the local bushland and with paper love birds fluttering on threads from the rafters.
Dad was always busy running his own business and being involved in numerous church activities but we always knew he loved us kids and Mum. Mum always made a big thing of Dad coming home from work and we delighted in running down the stairs to greet him. Each year they did something special to celebrate their wedding anniversary and we always knew exactly how many years they were celebrating. No wonder Barry and I have modelled our marriage on theirs!
I realise that life with a young family is often a real juggling act but, while we have a great responsibility to care for our children and provide for them, we should keep in mind that this is just a stage of our married life and make the effort to model for them a loving, respectful marriage. Our children will benefit from this, as will the next stage of our marriage. I also realise that some of the mums reading this, may not have had the kind of childhood I had but you have the opportunity to break the cycle and model a loving marriage for your children.
Others are single mums doing a great job juggling your responsibilities as mother and bread winner and I admire you for that. I know that when the children’s dad is still part of the children’s lives, many single mums make a special effort to show respect to him for the children’s sake. This helps to give the children some of the security that an ongoing loving relationship does.
Many churches run marriage enrichment courses, such as The Marriage Course and information can be found at themarriagecourse.org I encourage all married couples to attend such courses as it’s not a sign that there are problems, as some mistakenly think. Actually, it’s a sign that you value your marriage and want to get the best out of it. Some churches also have trained counsellors who can give you understanding and Godly counsel.
May God’s blessings be on your marriages,
Adele
