A cursory look at the row of magazines while checking out at the grocery store recently depict a common theme.
Best colors and locations for a wedding, ideas for bachelorette parties and honeymoon planning. The pictures are beautiful; the couple and their friends are happy and the locations are sigh worthy.
Grocery store magazine racks should have a fantasy or sci fi section. Divorce rates, while declining in 2021, are still around 44% of those people getting married.
Should engaged couples have a marriage counselor and a divorce lawyer on their gift registry?
This spring I taught the Marriage and Family Counseling class for our Graduate Clinical Mental Health Counseling Program at Lipscomb University. One of our in-class assignments was to write marriage vows. Either to remember what you may have written, or to create ideas for the future. The students quietly filled their pages. After exploring how we create dreams with words and phrases, the students asked what I would say after 44 years of marriage.
I wrote these words on the white board.
'I'll try again'
When Mark and I married we had the beautifully crafted promise, the carefully selected witty and thoughtful phrasing.
And the phrase that I've promised again and again throughout those years, is that I'll try again.
I'll try again to watch my words. I'll try again to forgive. I'll try again to love.
What is your promise? To yourself and those you love?
May today be filled with moments of promise.
