Marriage Values: Absolute Commitment & Unconditional Love, Part 1

Sep 30, 2013 by Jim and Jerolyn Bogear

In our book, Faith Legacy for Couples: Seven Values to Shape Your Marriage, we discuss our seven values to having a healthy, marriage that will leave a legacy to our children and all people with whom we interact.  In previous blogs we have taken the first of the month to cover ideas for living out the Parenting Values. Now let’s look at marriage.

Absolute Commitment and Unconditional Love:

We live in a society of upgrades. You don’t like your phone, upgrade. You want a bigger TV – buy it. Your tired of a piece of software you are using – upgrade to more bells and whistles. We have so many opportunities to get bigger and better that we have possibly allowed that mentality to creep into our thoughts about our marriage.

But a covenant marriage, as God designed, is a forever commitment. There is no option B. You and your spouse are to be bound together from I do to death. Period. (There are some biblical reasons for divorce that we will not discuss at this time.)

Even when you walked down that aisle on your wedding day, you most likely were not thinking, “Well, we’ll see how this works out.” Or, “I’ll give this a try.” No, we were planning to spend the rest of our life with this one person we chose to marry.

So how do we fight against the “upgrade” mentality after the rose-colored glasses have shattered?

Look no where else.

Sometimes, we can get distracted by what’s on the other side of the fence. We become disillusioned into believing that being with this other person has got to be better than being with the one I’ve got. Probably not. That other person has faults and idiosyncrasies just like our spouse. Instead, we need to view our spouse with the grace we ourselves need. No one is perfect, including you. If you are tempted elsewhere, run back to your spouse. Just because the honeymoon is over doesn’t mean your spouse cannot remain your lover and best friend. Instead of looking elsewhere, go home and look the person your chose in the eyes and say, “We are going to make this work.” Love them unconditionally for the person God designed them to be and allow them to grow in the same way they are allowing you to grow.

• How do you keep yourself focused on your commitment to one person?

For two more ideas on remaining in absolute commitment and unconditional love, check back in on Thursday, October 3.

~Jerolyn