In order to get married in the church, my husband and I had to complete a premarital class. This was going to be an all-day class filled with multiple engaged couples all preparing for their big day and their lives together. If I am being completely honest, I was not thrilled about spending a whole Saturday sitting through this class but I knew it had to be done so I just smiled and went along hoping to learn a few things about how to have a successful marriage.
I learned three major things from this class;
1. Only a few engaged couples had talked about foundation stuff before preparing to get married. My husband and I were blown away by how many couples hadn't talked about finances they were bringing into the marriage, how many kids they wanted and some even where they wanted to live in the future. Something that seemed so important to the foundation and the start of a marriage.
2. How to conceive a baby boy when that time came... no seriously, one of the presenters seriously was telling us about this but that is a story for another day.
3. Most importantly, if you don't have God at the center of your marriage you are setting yourself up for many rough days and nights.
I tell you all of this because I believe that way too many engaged couples don't take enough time to talk through the foundation stuff and don't put God at the center of their relationship from the beginning. This is also the same reason I wanted to share Covenant Co with you. Covenant Co is a Catholic-based company that has created an all-in-one wedding planning journal that invited God into the center of your relationship from the start of the wedding planning through the many years of happy and blessed marriage.
Check out Marissa from Covenant's insight on the importance of building your marriage on the rock and check out all Covenant has to offer any time at https://www.covenantco.org/ all My Christian Walk readers will receive 10% off the planners by using the code MCW10 at checkout.
“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house upon the rock, and the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat upon that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock.”
Matthew 7:24-25
I happened upon this parable today and it immediately made me think of an exercise that we did at my elementary school. My teacher set up two buckets — one with a toy house on a sturdy slab of stone, and the other with a toy house on a well-packed hill of sand. We were asked what we thought would happen when she poured a cup of water on each house. We watched as the sand caved in and flooded and the house fell and was swallowed by the mess. When water was poured over the house on the rock, it was unmoved.
The lesson of the parable is that if we listen to Christ, the foundation of our lives will be strong, so when tragedy and disaster and suffering and hard times come into our lives, we will remain steadfast.
But can’t we also apply this parable to our relationships as husband and wife? If our relationship is strong, then even things that might shake us up will not cause our house to cave in. Even when we face tragedy and disaster and suffering, we will be unmoved from our marriage with each other. Our relationship is strong, so our marriage is strong, so the world cannot break it apart.
That’s why Covenant is here. The secular world says that engagement is the time to plan the wedding. While this is true, that should not be the entire focus of an engagement period. Covenant’s goal is not to get every engaged couple to the altar — it is not sinful for an engaged couple to break up, but it is impossible for a valid marriage to end — but to encourage and support strong relationships and thus strong marriages.
Engagement should be a season of building that relationship and looking toward what your specific marriage will look like. It should be on learning habits now of honoring and respecting each other so much that sleepless nights and sickness and differences of opinion do not threaten the integrity of your marriage. It should be a time for discerning exactly what sort of things you and your partner need to be for each other to walk the path to heaven together.
Marriage is beautiful forever. Marriage is an earthly reflection of the faithful and eternal love that God has for his people, and the self-sacrificing love that Christ has for his Church. Satan wants nothing more than to tear that apart. Build your relationship into a sturdy rock so that nothing he throws at it can make it fall.
If you’re engaged, please take the time to support your future marriage, especially this week. If you’re married, please show your spouse just how much you love and honor them this National Marriage Week.
Please pray for me and my marriage. I’ll be praying for you!
xoxo,
Marissa @ Covenant Co.
