Marriage and Family
One of the most difficult things to do in one’s life is to look back in retrospect at the experiences and growing pains as a child, adolescent, and young adult, and try to understand or analyze why we are the way we are, and how our life experiences have molded us and influenced our future decisions, including if not limited the choice to marry and my experience is no exception. My mother divorced my father when I was about two years old and almost immediately remarried my step-father when I was almost three. I had two siblings, an older brother and sister and my step-father who was also recently divorced had two children of his own that lived in Mexico at the time my mom and step-dad married. I can recall many years later professing the following statement many times, “I never want to get married because it will probably end in a divorce.” I was content with that statement throughout my young adult life and carried those words into my late twenties …show more content…
Within a year our marriage had soured and communication and intimacy was obsolete. We also lacked the most significant piece to our union, which was God and looked to worldly influences to dictate how our marriage should be. We had an image that most folks define as a happy marriage, a nice home, new car, a good career, many friends, vacations, and yet all these things never filled the void inside our hearts. We were married but not in unity. Chapman (2014) points to the purpose of marriage “unity” by stating, “The supreme purpose of marriage is the union of two individuals at the deepest possible level and in all areas, which in turn brings the greatest possible sense of fulfillment to the couple and at the same time serves best the purpose of God for their lives”
One of the most difficult things to do in one’s life is to look back in retrospect at the experiences and growing pains as a child, adolescent, and young adult, and try to understand or analyze why we are the way we are, and how our life experiences have molded us and influenced our future decisions, including if not limited the choice to marry and my experience is no exception. My mother divorced my father when I was about two years old and almost immediately remarried my step-father when I was almost three. I had two siblings, an older brother and sister and my step-father who was also recently divorced had two children of his own that lived in Mexico at the time my mom and step-dad married. I can recall many years later professing the following statement many times, “I never want to get married because it will probably end in a divorce.” I was content with that statement throughout my young adult life and carried those words into my late twenties …show more content…
Within a year our marriage had soured and communication and intimacy was obsolete. We also lacked the most significant piece to our union, which was God and looked to worldly influences to dictate how our marriage should be. We had an image that most folks define as a happy marriage, a nice home, new car, a good career, many friends, vacations, and yet all these things never filled the void inside our hearts. We were married but not in unity. Chapman (2014) points to the purpose of marriage “unity” by stating, “The supreme purpose of marriage is the union of two individuals at the deepest possible level and in all areas, which in turn brings the greatest possible sense of fulfillment to the couple and at the same time serves best the purpose of God for their lives”