Exactly what I said! Neither of those two things exist. (By the way my 6-year-old daughter gave me the title. LOL) The Perfect Marriage? Let me just say from the get go, Unheard of! There is no perfect marriage, there is no model. What we do have are either healthy marriages and unhealthy ones.
I LOVE to eat. I could live eating NY style pizza, chicken wings, rice and beans with tostones and pork chops every week. Make me some mofongo and take me to a chinese buffet every week, oh and with a diet coke. For me, that would be just PERFECT, but the reality is that I would probably never make it past 50. In order for me to walk a longer life with Lucianne, and be able to one day enjoy my grand children, I must change my diet. Young Adults, this one is for you. I must eat my carrots, I have already quit on soda, and I am carefully watching my carbs and sugars. Why? Because aint nobody got time to die. I want to live longer. A healthy Marriage lasts longer. That’s our goal. But a perfect marriage is probably only found in movies and fairy tales. (Daniel 1:12 NIV “Please test your servants for ten days: Give us nothing but vegetables to eat and water to drink.)
Lucianne and I have only been married for 9 years, but we’ve been studying each other since 1992. That’s over 21 years of us liking each other, and disliking each other very much. Going to the same church, worshiping in the same teams together, and also disliking each other’s dates as our childhood years passed by. Growing up we were extremely competitive. We competed so much; who had the best grades in high school, who knew more about the medical field, and Jeopardy. Years ago we decided to study both of our parent’s relationships to gather an extended amount of information that has made their marriages successful.
In the past 9 years Lucianne and I have been so blessed to have done everything from Singles Cruises, Single and Young Adult Conferences, Marriage Counseling including Marriages in Gangs, believe it or not! We are by no means saying that you must do exactly what we do. Lucianne and I tell each other absolutely everything. We don’t hold any secrets. We know each other better than anybody else would. Are we perfect? No! But we have learned how to sustain a Healthy Marriage.
So how do we keep or strive for a healthy marriage? Here are a couple of great tips:
- Every marriage needs an older Exemplary Godly Marriage that will pour into your relationship weekly. It seems crazy, but it’s true. My wife and I have people who have been married longer than we have been alive, and they pour into us. They check in on us and they never take sides. We are honest with them, and we trust our lives in their hands.
- We have Godly Friends that pour into us, as they also allow us to poor into them.
- I have Godly Male Friends in my circle, that make my marriage stronger, and my wife also has strong and Godly Female Friends that poor into our marriage.
- The Last 10 years we’ve been on and off on tour, traveling the U.S and the world. One lesson we were forced to learn, is to Speak or Facetime at least 10 times a day before the day ends. Every week we have “Our time” Yes, that means no kids, and we have three crazy ones. If we can do it, you can too. This one is extremely challenging, but we are intentional about it.
- We know each others Love Language, like its nobodies business. We know each other’s Strengths and Weakness. We know each others Desires, Dreams and Passions. She knows all my passwords, and I know all of hers. We must remember that everything we do in the secret will be revealed in the public. We never operate in the secret realm. The enemy is the prince of darkness, and that’s where he resides. Stay in the Light.
- We Respect each other and we never yell at each other (Ok, Only when the Gators play the Seminoles)
- Last and definitely not the least, in a world filled with social media, and crazy schedules, Prayer is the foundation of our relationship. If something bothers us, we pray. Our home literally was built on prayer. When we built our first home, we wrote out prayers and blessings on paper and we place them inside the cement blocks of our home.
No marriage is perfect. Perfect means that there are no flaws. Do we disagree? All the time. At the ages of 34 we are still trying to get it together. It will never be perfect, but it’s healthy.