The Deception of Disillusionment
As you walk down the aisle on your wedding day, everything is exactly as you’d envisioned it. You walk slowly toward your betrothed, entranced by your handsome prince. As your bride approaches from the back of the church, you are captivated by her ethereal beauty. This is the day you’ve waited for, planned for, prayed for. You are eager to begin your lives together as husband and wife. Surely, this day is the beginning of eternal wedded bliss!
But eventually, reality sets in and you find yourself feeling a bit ambivalent. You’ve had a few disagreements. You’ve discovered one another’s idiosyncrasies and you’re not quite sure you can live with them for a lifetime.
The befuddled bride and groom suddenly find themselves facing a crossroads they had failed to anticipate. It is at this point that an important decision is made. Either one chooses to accept the perceived shortcomings of his or her spouse and trust the Lord to complete the marital work He began, or one chooses to walk away from the relationship and end the marriage never knowing what God could have accomplished if given the chance.
One of the biggest marriage-killers is a nasty little disease called Unmet Expectations. Many newlywed couples experience this within the first few years of marriage and oftentimes give in to its powers of persuasion as they allow themselves to become disillusioned. However, this dreaded disease is not limited to newlyweds. It can afflict couples time and again during the course of their married lives. It is common when facing struggles to begin feeling uncertain about the strength of your marital bond and Satan will use this to his advantage as he attempts to separate what God has joined together.
Most of us enter into marriage with certain expectations. Many of these expectations can be quite unrealistic. If we’ve fallen under the spell of fairytale weddings followed by a happily-ever-after life free from conflict and struggle, we are especially susceptible to the deception we’ve embraced. When troubles arise ~ and they will ~ we are left feeling disappointed, confused, or even angry and cheated. It is at this point of crisis that some couples will begin withholding love and affection as they become convinced they’ve married the wrong person.
Take heart, husband and wife! Your sacred union was and is not a random appointment.
Consider what Genesis tells us about Adam and Eve. Scripture states that God created Eve specifically for Adam. Notice that God did not churn-out a dozen or so females for Adam to choose from. He crafted an original, one-of-a-kind partner uniquely and beautifully designed to complement and to complete Adam. Nothing has changed! God is still designing spouses and deliberately drawing couples together to carry out the precise work He will equip them to accomplish together, and God is still working through the covenant of marriage to perfect us as individuals.
When Bobby and I were first married, we each had our own set of expectations. Most every young couple assumes that their new spouse will be who they imagine they will be. We had both created a perfect-spouse-ideal in our minds and when we each failed to live up to these unrealistic expectations, we couldn’t grasp what was amiss. Although we loved one another deeply, we each seemed to be falling short for the other. We found ourselves becoming uncertain and uneasy. We were each expecting the other to be the person we had conceptualized. Neither of us fit into the convoluted mold we’d fabricated for one another and we were inadvertently attempting to force one another into a distorted framework. God created each of us in a precise and deliberate manner and purposely brought us together in marriage. We were failing to see that our union had a Divine plan.
Our confusion was compounded by the fact that we were not followers of Christ at that time. We had no Biblical foundation or frame of reference upon which to call. We had to wing it. This is where God, in His graciousness, came to our rescue. He began teaching us, step by step, to accept one another as He had created us, to appreciate one another’s unique qualities, and give to one another fully our love and affection, withholding nothing.
We are all created in God’s image. Cherish the spouse God sent to you and appreciate his or her uniqueness. Do not permit the enemy to bring disenchantment to your marital relationship. Allow The Creator to perfect us as individuals and to bring harmony to our marriages by gratefully accepting and honoring the one He appointed to be joined to us for the duration of our earthly lives.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . “Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib, and he brought her to the man. “At last!” the man exclaimed. “This one is bone from my bone, and flesh from my flesh! She will be called ‘woman,’ because she was taken from ‘man.’ ” This explains why a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one.” ~ Genesis 2:22-24