Marriage Monday

Marriage For Happiness or Holiness?
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As I sit and type this I am impressed with the idea of what holiness means to me. Clean hands and a pure heart. Free of bitterness fleeing it like it is a plague.
Bitterness.
It inters into marriages like a masked bandit. It is a culprit of devision. Bitterness is the begining of shadows that blur a pure heart into tainted ideas and concepts.
Guarding oneself is often less confounding than you might think.
Three major enemies of any good life is
1. Being too tired
2. To Hungry
3. Too Lonely

We are a triune being Body soul (mind) and spirit ( a spirit renewed or not)
If we hunger for food, touch, education, mental stimulus, fellowship and friendship with God or others. If we need rest of body, or our mind is overwhelmed or our cup has run dry spiritually, or we need for physical intimacy we are made more vulnerable. If we are isolated, or do not get enough time with our mate or even with mutual friends these things can make us open prey to the enemy of hearts.
Bitterness is a weed best prevented to germinate, but if it does it is best to pull it soon as to not let root set and become entwined in words and regretful deeds. If it does set and flower leaves pod to the wind the havoc of seed tossed to wind makes healing a hard thing. Not impossible but you'll be pulling weeds for a long long time.

Words are seeds, pick a crop you'll be glad to live with.
Yet there are times to expose seed stores in such a way as the wounding of the other is lessoned. Some weeds are stored up. They are bagged into chambers of resentments secretly stowed for the future. Perhaps your mate hurts you and you forgive but it is still a root.
The weed may have been pulled but if you miss the root it can grow back sometimes that weed will be stronger than the one first pulled. It mulled in the soil of heart so long that the root is fast holding the deeper ground. These often need to be poisoned with the miraculous.

So Just know that Holiness is assaulted by temptations. The soil of your heart must be tilled and tendered by choice.
We must guard our hearts at all costs.
Just know that your enemy will assail you when you are at your weakest place. Assume it is him, feeding your mind with the bitter seed, he would so love to set. He is full of "crap" too he uses it to fertilize his crop. :)

Now as for happiness....
Happiness is peace with God.
Peace with man is the absence of strife.
I avoid strife like the plague it is.
That is what it is with me anyway.
Marriage is work, it is an endearing friendship that ebbs and flows. One that will flourish best when we receive what is given in gratitude and make known our desires and needs with a gentle yet firm voice. We will not always get what we want but that which God wants for us must be our goal. Not always happy but at peace. Peace is fought for it does not just come up to us and say "here I am" I am sure of Peace being a goal a quest of attainment through working out our own maturation. Supporting our mates as well as they work out theirs.
Happiness is a moment
that is fine, it feels good. It is however a moment. Peace is a life style choice. I am not speaking of subjection here in any way. I want the very best for him and for myself. In sickness and in health. We are not "happy" when one of us is sick and it hampers the others efforts or experience day to day, but it is the peace the health for each other in the midst of the storm.
Life is a battle.
If you chose sides intentionally or not you will have your standing on one side or the other. Know that life is an adventure. Marriage is sharing that adventure. With courage, and a desire to keep a soft heart toward each other.
Know who the "real" enemy is and your Happiness will not just be limited to a moment.
It becomes Peace, Joy. Long suffering that is doable and a pleasure to love another in a way that is removed of greed of the "I". I have known this love for 26 years now, and I have given this love and it is the real happiness not the counterfeit that sets so many up for desperate disappointment's.