The D Word

Nancy and I dated for two years before we married, but we were pretty young. When we got engaged, Nancy was nineteen and I was twenty-one. Not only were we young but we had no clue how to do marriage. Our premarital counseling consisted of two sessions with the pastor who married us. The first session was spent planning the wedding, and the second was spent listening to him tell me funny stories about Nancy’s family. The sad thing as I look back on this is that I thought our premarital counseling was great! I naively thought marriage would be wonderful and easy because Nancy and I would simply live life together. I had no idea married couples had to work at marriage to make it work. Nobody ever told me that.

So we jumped into this swimming pool of marriage thinking we knew how to swim—but we soon realized that not only did we not know how to swim but we did not even have a life preserver. We had more good days than bad days for the first couple of years, but then the bad days began to outnumber the good days. We tried to fix things on our own but weren’t doing a very good job. 

Somehow things began to improve. It was not overnight. It was a slow process, and I wish I could give you a “one, two, three” formula. What I can give you is this: We committed to make it work. That was a huge step for us. We took the D word (divorce) off the table and committed to leave it off. It was still a lot of work, but we were finally both working together toward the same goal.

So, wherever you are in your marriage, do not give up. Take the D word off the table and commit to each other to make it work. That step alone will make a difference.

In 7 Secrets to an Awesome Marriage, you will discover many great ideas to grow your marriage together.