3 ways to have faith in your marriage and avoid divorce

Marriage is a wonderful, but often challenging undertaking. Here are three ways to combine faith in yourself, your marriage and your higher power to strengthen your relationship and avoid divorce.

Marriage is so much more than a license, a ceremony and a promise made with symbolic jewelry. Marriage is the spiritual union of two souls who have been guided to each other to serve the highest good and create a spiritual family. The exchange of vows is a sacred rite of passage whose true meaning has escaped so many. When the ideals and fantasy of what you think marriage should be and feel like begin to fade, and the realities of responsibility set in, your emotional and spiritual health may take a back seat. And divorce may seem an attractive option to stop the fights and end the suffering.

If your marriage is in trouble, and you’re starting to doubt the decisions you’ve made, take a step back and take a breath. Close your eyes and remember that there is always somewhere to turn when you feel you’ve lost your way. Remember your faith, in any form it comes. Faith will give you strength and clarity and help you change your mind, body and spirit to one that attracts the experience you want.
So how do you find the faith to keep your marriage strong? Here are three ways:

Believe in each other

Finding faith in a partner who has let you down can be painful and difficult. You two may spend so much of your energy trying to fix each other that you forget to believe and trust in each other. But how can you trust someone who doesn’t seem to be changing for the better, or putting in the work to make the relationship work?
Believe that your spouse can be different, whether you see the changes or not. Instead of focusing on the missteps of the past, or the frustration of the present, believe that your spouse has the ability to be everything he or she strives to be. And this is the key. Believe that your spouse can uphold his or her own standards, or the standards of a higher power, not just yours. No two people are the same. And even a same-faith union does not mean you and your spouse share identical values or principles in every aspect. Nor would those same ideals manifest in identical ways. Find out exactly what your partner thinks and feels about all aspects of marriage, its meaning and its manifestations. Then believe that it will all happen. And in the meantime, do this same thing for yourself.

Believe in your marriage

Your marriage is an ordained expression of the lessons of your spiritual system. You and your spouse were brought together to achieve something momentous, and this was not done lightly or in vain. The entity that you, your spouse and your higher power created is larger than the two of you; more than the sum of its parts. But with great power comes great responsibility. Upholding your spiritual tenants in the face of everyday adversity becomes paramount in raising your family in the grace and omnipresence of your higher power. Keeping your faith means looking beyond the temporary, the mundane and the obstacles in your physical and spiritual success. Believe in your marriage as you believe in your higher power and its plans for both of you. Find or rediscover the purpose you two are meant to fulfill together, and model that for your children. Teach them to search for the meaning in life’s difficulties, and the divine in their marriages.

Believe in your path

Your marriage is a milestone on your lifelong journey to ultimate happiness and peace. In matrimony, your road has merged with the road of another, and you are sharing this sacred space as a part of both of your journeys. Marriage is an intersection that you can barrel through, missing the signals and likely causing a collision. Or you can slow down and usher the other passengers to their destinations — your spouse and children. Your path took the twists and turns it was meant to, even when you found yourself feeling lost and unguided. You may not have the map, but the right road is the road you’re on, and you and your spouse are travelling in the same direction. Travel together. You may need to breathe some fresh air at a rest stop, but use that time to recharge, regroup and reunite with yourself, your spouse, and your higher power. You and your life mate crossed paths as a way to guide you both home. See your marriage as a vehicle that was created to help you become your true self, and find your inner power, strength and love.
My parents, throughout their 30-year marriage, were excellent role models in teaching me how to choose a good mate, and how to traverse life’s bumpy roads while staying connected. Marriage is not without its hardships, the belief that together they can get through anything teaches me in many ways how I wish to manifest this leg of my journey.
The key to keeping faith and avoiding divorce is not to avoid divorce; it is to thrive in marriage. Really be as fully invested in your marriage as you are in your faith. Believe in it. Trust in it. Know it will guide you and protect you. Remind yourself of how far you’ve come, and how much you’ve already overcome. Look forward to how far there is to go, and how much more there is to experience. And consider how you got here, and why you came in the first place. Then let go, and let faith guide the rest of your journey through marriage, family and life.


What are your thoughts on these? Do you disagree? Do you know any other attributes of building a marriage strong that should have made the list? Leave a comment below:) Stay blessed!

How to respectfully communicate your needs in marriage

You take two people from different backgrounds and put them together for an extensive period of time and you are bound to have a difference of opinion. Not only that, but you will most likely have different ways to approach conflict and communicate your needs. This is marriage. You converse with each other daily, but do you realize that how and what you say can literally be the distinguishing factor between a great marriage and a tolerable one?

If you want to become more skillful at not only communicating your needs but also graciously receiving the needs of your spouse, let me offer a few suggestions.

When communicating a need to your spouse:

Be direct

Just because you express several times a day how strongly you feel about having a clean kitchen it does not mean your husband will suddenly start wiping down the counters. You can't find fault with him if you haven't taken the time to communicate your expectations.

The best way to avoid feelings of resentment from unmet expectations is by simply voicing exactly what you want. For the wife who wants more help around the house, an effective approach might be: "Hey babe, do you mind helping me with the dishes after dinner? It would mean a lot to me. If we get the kitchen cleaned up now, we will have more time to spend with each other later on." This invites (not nags) the spouse to help. It also communicates that he is what's important — not the task at hand.

Tone

The tone of voice we use is responsible for about 35-40 percent of the message we are sending. When your spouse asked you to pick up the kids from Sunday school or school choir practice and you said, "Alright," did you sound sarcastic, indifferent, distracted or sincere? Especially when speaking to your sweetheart, you need to be mindful of the tone you use.

Timing

Pick your battles and your battleground. If you'd like to talk about money matters, choose a time when both of you are in a stress-free environment and able to talk without distractions — like after the kids are in bed. Timing can be the difference between engaging in a constructive conversation and erupting like Kilimanjaro.

When you are on the receiving end of hearing your spouse's concern:

Just listen

Listening entails much more than idly giving verbal cues while surfing the net. Here are a few things to keep in mind when your spouse is speaking his mind: keep eye contact, put away all distractions (like turning off phones and TVs), don't interrupt, and repeat back his objective to avoid misunderstandings. So often we think we know what the other person is going to or trying to say so we cut them off mid-sentence or tune out completely. Especially when it comes to the person with whom you share your life, you need to show her your love and attentiveness by listening and internalizing her thoughts and feelings — no matter the subject.

Validate

Validating is the last step to letting your spouse know you have truly heard her and want to understand her needs.

Mark D. Ogletree and Douglas E. Brinley state this on validating your spouse's feelings: "Often we may forget one final point in communicating with each other. Part of the reason we take risks in sharing with one another is to have our need for validation met. It is not enough to let our spouse share with us; we must take it a step further and validate the risk he or she just took in sharing with us."

You might reply with something as simple as, "Thank you for sharing that with me. I love hearing about your day." If you've discussed weightier matters, you can say something like: "That must have been difficult to share with me, but I'm so glad you did. I may not understand all you are feeling now, but I want to. I hope together we can figure this out."

In a marriage, you need to be so careful about how and what you communicate to your spouse. Most of us are much more fragile and vulnerable than we let on- Never let a problem to be solved become more important than a person to be loved.

Going forward, resolve to communicate more effectively by first voicing expectations with kindness and then receiving them with compassion and love. By doing so, you not only foster a deeper communion as husband and wife, but also as mother and father.

If you enjoyed this post, I'd love it if you'd share it with your friends. If you love connecting on social media, you can stay in touch with me via Facebook, Ndoa and  Google+ - I can't wait to hear from you!