Hills, Valleys, and God's plan for marriage

A priest gave a talk during my FertilityCare Practitioner education on supporting Catholic marriages. As part of that talk, he read to us something called the "Exhortation before marriage". This beautiful reflection was part of the Catholic marriage liturgy in the pre-Vatican II era and some priests today still choose to incorporate it into wedding Masses because it's wisdom is inspiring, enduring and needed now as much as ever before. At the time of my training I had been married 5 years and had never heard this Exhortation before. It was so inspiring to me at the time that I was eager to request a copy and print it out to have in our home. I didn't know at the time that we were entering into a really challenging season in marriage. Years 5-8 of marriage (in our experience) stand out as being particularly challenging. As of this summer my husband and I have been married 12 years and although we, please God, have decades more ahead of us, in 12 years we have learned a couple of things.

I've learned that marriage has hills and valleys when you zoom in and when you zoom out.

By this I mean, there are ups and downs in the day to day living of married life. A challenging interaction between the two of you, the force of outside pressures, a missed connection - something can throw you off balance and make for a bad day or week.

These little hills and valleys exist on a backdrop of major hills and valleys. For us personally reflecting back we can see years that in the big picture felt like hills and others that felt like valleys.

If you're in a valley, dig in and hold on.

Don't pull away. Little valleys can often be righted by a sincere apology, a heart to heart conversation, speaking the other's love language or a little date night. Or sometimes, just a good night's sleep. If you're having an "off" day or week and it's not your norm, don't fall into the lie that it's all bad. If you're in a big valley, something big may need to change - counseling, routine changes, couple prayer. With time and effort, better days, weeks and years will come. It helps me to remember that the hard years still had good days in them (zoom in). And that the hard years almost always make way for good years (zoom out).

Rather than rambling on, I want to share this "Exhortation before Marriage" with you because I certainly can't say it better than the Church. And because whether you're preparing for marriage or have been married for decades, we can all glean wisdom from this. I recommend that all married couples save a copy and prayerfully read and reflect on it from time to time throughout their marriage.

Having God's design and vision for marriage at the forefront of your marital life could be just what you need to climb out of a valley. I'm praying for you.

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My dear friends: You are about to enter upon a union which is most sacred and most serious. It is most sacred, because it was established by God himself. By it, he gave to man a share in the greatest work of creation, the work of the continuation of the human race. And in this way he sanctified human love and enabled man and woman to help each other live as children of God, by sharing a common life under his fatherly care.

Because God himself is thus its author, marriage is of its very nature a holy institution, requiring of those who enter into it a complete and unreserved giving of self. But Christ our Lord added to the holiness of marriage an even deeper meaning and a higher beauty. He referred to the love of marriage to describe his own love for his Church, that is, for the people of God whom he redeemed by his own blood. And so he gave to Christians a new vision of what married life ought to be, a life of self-sacrificing love like his own. It is for this reason that his apostle, St. Paul, clearly states that marriage is now and for all time to be considered a great mystery, intimately bound up with the supernatural union of Christ and the Church, which union is also to be its pattern.

This union, then, is most serious, because it will bind you together for life in a relationship so close and so intimate, that it will profoundly influence your whole future. That future, with its hopes and disappointments, its successes and its failures, its pleasures and its pains, its joys and its sorrows, is hidden from your eyes. You know that these elements are mingled in every life, and are to be expected in your own. And so not knowing what is before you, you take each other for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death.

Truly, then, these words are most serious. It is a beautiful tribute to your undoubted faith in each other, that recognizing their full import, you are, nevertheless, so willing and ready to pronounce them. And because these words involve such solemn obligations, it is most fitting that you rest the security of your wedded life upon the great principle of self-sacrifice. And so you begin your married life by the voluntary and complete surrender of your individual lives in the interest of that deeper and wider life which you are to have in common. Henceforth you will belong entirely to each other; you will be one in mind, one in heart, and one in affections. And whatever sacrifices you may hereafter be required to make to preserve this mutual life, always make them generously. Sacrifice is usually difficult and irksome. Only love can make it easy, and perfect love can make it a joy. We are willing to give in proportion as we love. And when love is perfect, the sacrifice is complete. God so loved the world that he gave, his only-begotten Son, and the Son so loved us that he gave himself for our salvation. "Greater love than this no man hath, that a man lay down his life for his friends."

No greater blessing can come to your married life than pure conjugal love, loyal and true to the end. May, then, this love with which you join your hands and hearts today never fail, but grow deeper and stronger as the years go on. And if true love and the unselfish spirit of perfect sacrifice guide your every action, you can expect the greatest measure of earthly happiness that may be allotted to man in this vale of tears. The rest is in the hands of God.

Nor will God be wanting to your needs; he will pledge you the life-long support of his graces in the Holy Sacrament, which you are now going to receive.