When I think about marriage, and the impact you and this Club are having on changing the conversation surrounding it, my heart immediately jumps for joy.
Rarely does a day go by that I don’t receive an email or note from someone grateful for the encouragement this club provides by simply showing that happy marriages do, in fact, exist. And giving them hope theirs can be one of them.
Next Sunday, the New York Times® will print their weekly Best Sellers list and you’ll notice a familiar name somewhere around the top.
A week after releasing my first book, Happy Wives Club, my publisher received word that the book would debut at #3 on the New York Times Best Sellers list – only behind The Wolf of Wall Street and Lone Survivor. Around the same time, it was also named a USA Today® Best Seller.
How amazing is that? What astonishes me most is the realization that this book, as well as this club, could reach millions more around the world.
The possibility of a new conversation about marriage -one that puts a spotlight on the positive side of it- warms every corner of my heart and sends my soul into jubilation.
During the launch week of the book, 200 wonderful bloggers joined me in talking about love and marriage on their own blogs.
I wish you could read all the posts as so many of them were simply amazing. But my guess is you barely have time to fold your own socks let alone read a ton of blog posts. So I’ll do my best in the coming days to showcase several I think you’ll love.
Today’s post by Christine St. Vil’s is one of a few I’ve selected so far: 5 Reasons Why I Still Believe in Marriage. I’d love to hear your answer to the same question in the comments section below. Why do you still believe in marriage?
Until tomorrow…make it a great day!
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If I actually listened to what statistics say about marriage, I’d be in big trouble. There are so many scary statistics out there like “In America, there is one divorce every 13 seconds. That’s 6,646 divorces per day, and 46,523 divorce per week“. And then (from the same source) there’s: “The average length of a marriage that ends in divorce is eight years”. Scary right?
Well, I’m choosing to throw all of that out of the window because despite what people are saying, despite what statistics say, I still believe in marriage.
I always talk about the importance of guarding your heart against any outside threat to your marriage, and this would include all of the depressing info that’s out there on divorce. As in anything in life that you want, it all starts with what you allow yourself to truly believe in your mind and heart.
It starts with what you feed to your soul. If you want a happy marriage, you can’t feed it negativity, hate, jealousy, or mistrust. If you want to have a long-lasting marriage, it starts with what you feed it.
So despite what reports and critics are saying I still believe it marriage.
“Therefore, what God has joined together, let no man separate” Mark 10:9. Before my husband and I got married, I always knew he was the one I wanted to grow old with. Marriage was never something that scared me.
I was never nervous on my wedding day, just excited to finally start living with the man I had fallen in love with six-and-a-half years prior. When we went through pre-marriage counseling, we focused on things we were going to do to ensure that we didn’t end up as a divorce statistic.
Yes, it’s true that I’m a big girl and I can take care of myself. Yes it’s true that I don’t “need” a man. But I want a man, and I love having a husband. I love being taken care of. I love having someone to share my deepest insecurities with. I love having a husband because I love seeing the sunshine that he puts in our kids’ lives every day.
I love having a husband because with him by my side, I don’t feel like there’s anything I can’t do or accomplish. He’s my biggest supporter and encourager, and I wouldn’t want to live my life without him in it.
I truly believe that having children has strengthened our marriage in more ways than one. We learned right away that we had to be the example that we wanted our children to have of a happy and healthy marriage. I want my children to know that regardless of what they may see and hear as they get older, marriage is still real, and a good marriage is still possible.
Marriage has allowed my husband and I to grow in communication, love and support for one another. It’s strengthened our union so that we don’t just say we’re a team, but we truly are.
There is no other union as divine as the union created by marriage. I would marry my husband 1,000 times over if I could. Is everything peachy perfect? No, it never is. But I’ll choose imperfection in marriage any day. No matter what stress or overwhelm I’m going through, he’s there to hold me up and see me through.
Sites like Happy Wives Club and Black and Married with Kids breathe life and optimism into marriages all over the world. Sites like these, perfectly contradict what the statistics are saying and the negative messaging that certain reality shows are putting out there. The truth is, there is no real reason NOT to believe in marriage. It’s a choice. And the choice is yours.
Question: What are some of the reasons you still believe in marriage?
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