I had the privilege of photographing a wedding this past Sunday afternoon.  (I've been shooting weddings for 15 years now.)  It was a charming, small, intimate wedding.  I still get sappy about weddings.  It's a big deal to choose to covenant with someone else for the rest of your life.

A healthy marriage is a choice.  It doesn’t happen by accident.  Intentionally growing together through sacrificial love with God’s glory as the centerpiece, will be the key to a marriage that is not only fulfilling and long-lasting, but a marriage that honors God.

Practically, this means seeking the mutual building up of each other.  It means the intentional choice to allow peace to reign in your hearts even when irritation and resentment are knocking.  It is the intentional God-centered optimism that is rooted in the idea of edifying your mate to build and encourage them; to help them become the man or woman of God that He desires for them to become.

Approaching the marriage with optimism is a view towards building a oneness that honors God.  Approaching each other within the marriage with optimism is a view towards mutual submission that honors each other and God.

Scripture provides practical insight into the negative qualities that we are to shed personally.  At the same time, Scripture provides insight into key traits and characteristics that we are to exhibit and model.  That being said, the goal is not to fix the short-comings in the lives of our mates but rather to make those adjustments in our own life.  One might consider this.  Build up the positive attributes and qualities in your mate (outward focus) while working on diminishing the negative attributes and qualities in your self (inward focus).  Both are a choice.  Both require intentionality.  Both require the allowance of the Spirit of God to work in you (inward focus) and through you (outward focus) with the expressed purpose of bringing glory to God.  By keeping the focus on God’s glory as primary, the practical steps to bring about His glory will unfold in the way each mates listens to one another, speaks to one another and lives out the commitment they made to one another.

Cherishing your mate is a lifestyle rather than a greeting card once a year.  An optimistic view towards marriage and to a life-long personal commitment to each other and to God is truly a choice.  It’s a choice to get happy, be happy and stay happy.  It is critical to recognize that the source of our happiness must come from God and not our mates.  Our happiness must not rise and fall on our mate’s ability to “deliver” on their end of the marriage covenant 24/7.  There are times and seasons of life where our mates will falter and they will let us down.

At the end of the day, we have to choose to live a life in Christ and not a life in our mates.  Our optimism is rooted in the covenantal idea that this marriage is not about “what’s in it for me” but rather “what’s in it for God.”  When God is the centerpiece, we embrace the idea that marriage is a reflection of the idea that Christ died for the church.  Our commitment to each other and to the marriage is not susceptible to the ebb and flow of the good and bad times of life.  Our commitment to each other is rooted in the bedrock of Christ Jesus who died for us.  A view towards optimism is a view towards a covenantal commitment that says, “this marriage is always worth fighting for.”  It is a view that says, “I am intentionally choosing to focus on what I love about you rather than what I can’t stand about you.”  It’s the habit of happiness.