Growing Your Marriage ‐ Part 1Sample

Eliminating the ‘D’ Word

Devotional Content:

Nancy and I dated for two years before we married, but we were pretty young. When we got engaged, Nancy was nineteen and I was twenty. Not only were we young, but we had no clue how to do marriage. Our premarital counseling consisted of two sessions with the pastor who married us. The first session was spent planning the wedding, and the second was spent listening to the pastor tell funny stories about Nancy’s family.

As I look back at this, the sad thing is that I thought our premarital counseling was great! My idea of marriage was to just live life together and everything would be perfect. I had no idea you had to work at marriage to make it work. Nobody ever told me that.

So we jumped into this swimming pool of marriage thinking we knew how to swim—and soon realized that not only did we not know how to swim but we did not even have a life preserver. We had more good days than bad days for the first couple of years, but then the bad days began to outnumber the good days. We tried to fix things on our own, but we didn’t know where to start.

I wish I could give you a three-step formula to what worked to save our marriage. It wasn’t that simple. But what I can give you is this: Things began to improve only after we committed to make it work. That was a huge step for us. At one point we even promised each other to never again use the word divorce in our marriage. We took the “D” word off the table for good. Fixing our marriage was still a lot of work, and the process was slow, but we were finally both working together.

Wherever you are in your marriage, do not give up. Move a giant step in the right direction by taking the “D” word off the table and committing to each other to make it work. That step alone will make a difference.

Today’s Challenge: Eliminate the “D” word from your marriage conversations, thoughts, and vocabulary; commit to making your marriage work.

Going Deeper:

1. What did you do individually and as a couple to prepare yourselves for marriage?

2. Would you do anything different today if you could have a ‘do over?’

3. Define the phrase “working at your marriage.” How can you apply that to your marriage?

4. In your marriage, what is a ‘good day’ and what is a ‘bad day?’

5. Have you taken the ‘D’ word off of the table in your marriage? If not, will you commit to do that today?

6. Finally, are you both willing to recommit to your marriage for the long haul?