Love and Marriage

This tune popped up unexpectedly in my head as I was reading my work email messages. It's an old song sung by Frank Sinatra titled Love and Marriage. The first few lines are as follows:

Love and marriage, love and marriage
They go together like a horse and carriage
This I tell you brother
You can't have one without the other

Things seemed much simpler in that era or it could just be our perception of the way things were. People fell in love and naturally, they would wed. Nowadays, that isn't necessarily the way things progress. Love and marriage don't go hand in hand in this day and age. Many view marriage as being restrictive; like an institutional cage which kills the individual's freedom.

DH and I celebrated our 6th wedding anniversary yesterday. We both agreed that there has been a lot of ups and downs in our marriage. Some downs are repetitive because they are merely symptoms of their root causes which we have not adequately addressed and resolved. Issues like past hurts, anger, disappointment and resentment hinder me from seeing the full potential of my marriage. Our ups are blemished by such stains and lose the vibrancy of the full joy that they actually hold.

My anniversary gift to DH was a pair of tickets to a classical orchestra performance. It was titled Spanish Fantasia. We both enjoyed the concert. The pieces played took me through a range of emotions. I felt melancholy in one moment, soothed in the next, followed by an unexplainable intensity which transpired into an exhilarating climax, making me applaud till both hands ached.

Will God applaud my performance of wifely duties when He looks at how the 6 years of our marriage has been played? Am I always in sync with DH? Do I approach the music at the same tempo as DH? Does the melody of our marriage inspire and encourage others? Or are we horribly out of tune? Do others wince whenever they hear us?

I don't know the answers (and DH just said yesterday that I think too much!). I'll just pray that at the end of the day, God will hear a sweet, sweet sound when our marriage rhapsody is played to Him.