Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

Marriage is not a noun; it’s a verb. It isn’t something you get. It’s something you do. It’s the way you Love your partner every day. Barbara De Angelis

Creativity feeds our soul, food feeds our body, books feed our minds, and love makes our world go around. This is why we love to cook for people we love. We stir our creations with love and sharing a meal becomes more than just a pit stop for food.

When we have family gatherings we have food. Yesterday we were all getting together and then realized it was the Super Bowl so instead of the dinner I had planned my daughter made nachos and chicken wings. Everyone stayed for the half-time show and then it was time to go home to get ready for the week ahead.

No matter what else we accomplish in life building a family is what gives us our greatest joy, most worry, and biggest sorrow when they break apart. Family is the glass ball we juggle along with all our other balls, and it is the one we must protect as we build a career, fit creative endeavors, and everything else into our lives. We often take our family for granted until something happens and we realize we should have put more into it, made more time, and realized it was the priority that needed tending.

Marriages are the foundation of our families but anyone who is in one knows “happily ever after,” is a fairytale for most, because it implies that getting married was the big thing when staying married, and staying happily married is the challenge.

It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages. Friedrich Nietzsche

We don’t want to hear that love is a verb but we might be better off thinking of building a family as a duty we are taking on, rather than buying into the idea of a romantic fairytale, one true love, and the ideal partner.

What if our job is to do our best to become the ideal partner, for our one true love which we chose to go through life with, and they only become our one true love if we continue to be true to them? We are the ones that need to have true love by being steadfast, honest, and true as we go through the challenges that life throws at us. What if it is only at the end of our lives that we can say we have true love because we endured to the end?

It doesn’t sound romantic to endure, but isn’t part of life enduring, getting through the hard parts to get to the better parts? The winter of our relationship will give way to springtime if we don’t give up, we don’t get bitter, and if we don’t do something that sabotages the relationship.

Giving up may be one of the great mistakes of our lives, we give up on ourselves, or someone we love in a moment of weakness, and see everything we’ve built come tumbling down. It might be a “little thing” that leads to winter in our relationship, but if we don’t repair the rift, we won’t be walking hand in hand in the sunshine of the spring that is coming.

If we are lucky enough to have a partner we need to hold on tight and make the best of the lives we are building together. We don’t only get the good parts we have to move through the seasons of life and love.

Marriage stands the test of time when both you and your spouse work toward making things better. And we are tested the most when we face adversities. If you can sail through the adversities as one, as a team, then you have won half the battle. Unknown

A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person. Mignon McLaughlin

True love stands by each other’s side on good days and stands closer on bad days. Unknown

Thank you for reading this post. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you will come back and read some more. Have a blessed day filled with gratitude, joy, and love.

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The post We fall in love, but we build a marriage. Anything we build needs maintenance. appeared first on Belynda's Books.