What They Don’t Tell You About Marriage

You’re in a relationship and things are going well–so now what? Do you think about ‘taking the big plunge’ and getting married? Or do you search for basically any other option besides that?

Maybe we can move in together? Or get a dog? Or maybe I can close my eyes and hope everything stays the same for as long as possible and just not change anything and then I won’t mess it up?

No doubt you’ve heard the divorce statistics. You’ve heard about the challenges of raising children in today’s world and seen the projected costs of college in 2040. You’ve heard about the top stressors in relationships, from finances to in-laws. You’ve heard and you’ve seen that marriage is certainly no easy, Disney, ‘Happily Ever After’ story.

But what you haven’t been told, at least not nearly enough, is that marriage is worth it all. It’s worth the fight. It’s worththe vulnerability. It’s worth the sacrifice. It’s worththe adventure.

Many of us millennials and younger come from families where we have seen love fail in at least one (if not all) of those couples closest to us—our parents, our aunts and uncles, maybe even our grandparents. On top of that, we have the infamous ‘hook-up culture’ alive and well all around us presenting love to be something that is disposable; a flash, a flame, that only ever burns itself out.

From a young age it can seem to us safer to not get too invested in love. Many of us even earn the label “commitment-phobes,” preferring the title to the chance of getting hurt.

But we can’t run from our brokenness. We have to face it and fix it. We have to open the wounds in our hearts in order to give them the chance to heal.

Each of us has been made to be able to give love and receive love. Any amount of counseling or healing that needs to take place in order to get us back to a place where we can believe that, and stop believing the lies that we will never be good enough or that we don’t deserve love, is well worth the cost and effort. We have to uproot the fear that we have allowed to take root within us so that we can accept the beauty of genuine love.

The real love that we desire is two best friends willing to sacrifice for the sake of one another and any family that may come from their love. It is love with a goal in mind. Love that is willing to make short term sacrifices for the long-term benefits of their life together. Love that grows with time. Love that has its eyes so fixed on something greater, something beyond the two people involved, that nothing in this life has the power to shake it.

I am 25 years old, recently married and just gave birth to our first child. Many people ask us how marriage is going and how the “hardest first year” is going as the honeymoon phase ends.

And I just have to be honest with you, marriage is amazing!! I truly mean it. It’s hard, it’s sacrificial, it takes a desire to put another person above yourself, but it is also the best thing I’ve ever done. I get to be with my best friend all the time and suddenly everything has new meaning. Work, travel, hobbies, planning for the future… it all becomes a part of building up our family together. And the vows, the commitment, are the very foundation that we build from.

Both my husband and I come from divorce. We had to heal, we had to face different scars, we had to relearn and recommit to what love truly is in its deepest sense. We had to talk through every painful scenario and recommit time and time again that no matter what, divorce is not an option for us. Just as a good parent never ceases to love his or her child, even when it’s hard, love was not made to end.

My grandparents have been married and in love through 50 years, 4 children, and countless ups and downs. When you get to this point and you look back on your life, how could you ever regret the commitment that made it all possible?

Marriage is worth it.

(Posted Originally on www.restoreyourcrown.com)

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Kaylin Zumwalt (Koslosky) is in her 20’s and after recently getting married is excited to be transitioning from a high school science teacher to a full time mom with the arrival or their first baby. She loves hiking and being outdoors, and is passionate about sharing the beauty of Christ and this world with others. She is the co-author of Daughter of the King: Wait, Where’s My Crown?! and co-founder of www.restoreyourcrown.com with her best friend, Megan Finegan.