Starting Marriage on a Different Plane
Comparing planes
“The trouble with kids these days,” my friend said, “is that they want to start off where we spent 40-50 years to get.”
I heard my mother-in-law say the same words years ago. I’m pretty sure she was talking about one of her offspring and spouse. I’m also pretty sure she wasn’t talking about me and Dave. That’s because neither of us wanted to start out in the same plane that our parents were on at that time.
What took them years to accumulate happened bit by bit, and not by a bank loan. Nor did what they accumulate happen because people endowed them with furniture or financial means to get what they wanted when they got married.
Dave’s parents set up housekeeping in a 8 ft x 20 ft. house trailer. When they saved enough money to get something bigger, they did. Little by little, they accumulated furniture and children. In time, they built a house large enough to hold their eight children – and by that time, some of them were already out of the nest.
My older half-siblings talk about the way things were when they were young. They remind us how good we had it because when they were growing up, they didn’t have all these conveniences.
Marriage on a different plane
The foundation of marriage is what is vital – not how financially established we are. Finances – and handling them well – is certainly important. Yet, thinking we must have all that our parents (or others) have when we get married is faulty logic.
When a couple’s foremost desire is to build a marriage that is strong and sure, then the place they live doesn’t matter. How little they have or how much they own is not significant.
Marriage on a different plane recognizes (and models) that we don’t need a newly remodeled house to have a solid marriage, nor do we need a landscaped lawn to have a good marriage.
Instead of comparing ourselves to our parents, to our neighbors or our friends, we must focus on what matters most. Our focus needs to be on what is eternal. Rather than focusing on the material, focus on laying a foundation of marriage that lasts a lifetime.
