Last weekend I was in Knoxville TN helping my parents to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary. Now, by any standards this is quite an accomplishment for a married couple, but one that should not be as rare of an event as it is in today’s society. The latest statistics indicate that roughly 60% of marriages end in divorce. 80% of Second (or third) marriages end in divorce. Over one million children watch their parents divorce each year, and half of the babies born this year will be forced to endure the separation of their parents.

The average marriage that ends in divorce lasts less than 8 years. 8 YEARS!! This is hardly even enough time for a couple to learn how to fight well.

My parents have now been married for 50 years. My grandparents were married for 54 years before my grandfather died of cancer. Neither of these couples have had it particularly easy. In fact, my grandparents relationship endured through the great depression, my grandfathers alcoholism, his cancer and any number of other challenges that could easily have been used as an excuse to go their separate ways. But that was not the point of their relationship. The point was not “this is not working for me, I am going to go find someone else who can better meet my needs.” it was “I can’t get through this without you. I love you, and because I love you, I need you. I am grateful that someone would stick by me through the easy times and the hard (even when I created the hard). I would never want to do this alone. Thank you for loving me even though I am imperfect.”

I will never forget the words of my Youth Pastor, Chris Cameron, who led Gloria and I through our pre-marital counseling. Chris knew that I was young, very romantic and had an unrealistic view of what marriage was going to be. In fact, he watched me grow up on too many TV sitcoms and the problems that were coming in our marriage were not going to be resolved in a half-hour…and there was certainly no laugh track to accompany the mistakes. Chris pulled me aside one day a few weeks before the wedding and said “Listen to me very carefully. I want to make sure that you understand what you are signing up for here. Being married is not what you think it is going to be. After a period of time, the novelty is going to wear off. That twitter-pated feeling that you have now is not going to last for the rest of your life. You will not feel the same level of “spark” and “romance” that you feel right this minute. So, you have to decide, and you have to decide right now: Do you want to be married? Being married is not a promise of having warm, fuzzy feelings for the rest of your life. It is going to be hard work and It is more of a commitment to being married than it is to the person you are marrying. You have to decide that you will be committed to being married no matter what the circumstances, no matter how you feel. Can you make a commitment to the commitment?”

I did not realize how quickly my commitment would be tested. In fact, the first two years of our marriage was a living hell. I was indeed very young and immature when we got married; when we would disagree, I knew all of the things to say to hurt Gloria and “win” the fight. In fact, at the end of a fight, if she was crying, I was winning. It took two full years for me to learn how to truly love her and how to protect her precious heart (especially from me) when I was angry, upset or didn’t get my way. There were many times during that first 2 years that she would have been quite justified in walking away from this very toxic relationship. But, she did not. I have no doubt that I did a lifetimes worth of damage in that first two years, but Gloria was committed to making the relationship work. In fact, I remember thinking distinctly “I really do not want to live and feel this way for the next 65 years of my life!” I was not looking for the escape hatch, and neither was Gloria. Ultimately, it was the fact that we knew we were married for life that drew us to a place where we worked hard on our relationship and our love grew. It grew in ways that I could never begin to describe to you. Our love is strong and has seen us through many storms that would shipwreck other relationships. And adversity does that, it draws you closer to someone than you ever thought possible. The problem is, most people just don’t stick around long enough to give adversity the chance to bear fruit.