Every time my family and I are transferred somewhere in the Work of God, the first thing I do is go online and check out the place we’re moving to… the weather, the people, the cities, the language, etc. I want to be prepared. People should do the same when they’re about to get married. Marriage is NOT a romantic movie that always has a happy ending. Marriage is hard work.
I like to think of it as the oneness phase. When we’re born, we immediately enter into the dependence phase. We need others to feed us, clothe us, carry us around, put us to sleep, and everything. It’s a way of God showing us we depend on Him fi rst – we can’t do this on our own.
Then when we grow up as a child, we want to learn everything, entering the capability phase. We learn how to walk, talk, read, add, and everything. God’s way of showing us how capable we are into doing whatever we want. The teenage years are interesting though, we think we’re independent when we’re not, we think we know, when we do not, we think we can when we cannot. It’s a messy phase… a lot of people pay a high price in their adulthood because of this phase. It’s another way of God telling us we still need Him, even though we don’t think we do…
Then adulthood hits us and we need to work for ourselves, get our own place, have our own money, and basically fi nd our own place in society. It’s a tough phase and requires a lot of focus and self-control. God wants us to learn how to work for what we want and with His help, things really do happen for us. But when marriage comes along, we get lost. We make a mess of it…
In faith, Cristiane Cardoso