Article November 9, 1998 Issue

What makes marriage work?

Chris Snow with contributions from Fenella Bennetts, Glynis Allen Burgdorff, David Littlefield Horn, Timothy A. MacDonald, Elizabeth Dawn Diffa, Elise L. Moore, Clare G. Turner, Beverly Goldsmith

My wife and I had gone into the marriage expecting a permanent commitment. All was happy for a short time, but then I began to doubt severely whether I had done the right thing and made the right choice. The doubts plagued me even as I prayed. I felt intuitively that God had brought us together for His purpose, and I did not want to give up on the love that was being expressed in the marriage.

The doubts, however, were so persistent that my prayers did not stop the degeneration of the relationship. Finally, my wife and I asked a Christian Science practitioner to pray with us. Since both my wife and I had experienced physical healing through prayer in Christian Science, we wanted to rely on it to heal the relationship problem as well. We realized we needed a deeper, spiritual solution.

The practitioner told me something that struck me deeply: Christ Jesus taught that "they twain shall be one flesh" (Mark 10:8). It went right to the heart of the basis for marriage and for what makes it last. I wasn't living just for myself anymore but for another as well. We were inseparable in expressing God, divine Love, in our lives together. This was the basis for permanence which I hadn't seen before. My prayer for myself and for our marriage became more effective.

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