#marriage

...marriage is foremost a vocation. Two people are called together to fulfill a mission that God has given them. Marriage is a spiritual reality. That is to say, a man and a woman come together for life, not just because they experience deep love for each other, but because they believe that God loves each of them with an infinite love and has called them to each other to be living witnesses of that love. To love is to embody God's infinite love in a faithful communion with another human being. ↗

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

#marriage #experience

But miracles are not for the asking; they come only when the stern eyes of God droop shut for a moment, and Our Lady takes advantage of His inattention to grant an illicit mercy. God...is an Anglican, whereas Our Lady is of the True Faith; the two of Them have an uneasy relationship, unable to agree on anything, except that if They divorce, the Devil will leap gleefully into the breach. ↗

— Michel Faber

#faith #marriage #miracles #religion #faith

What really holds their marriage together are mutual respect of an awesome depth, a shared sense of humor, faith that they were brought together by a force greater than themselves, and a love so unwavering and pure that it is sacred. ↗

— Dean Koontz

#god #grace #humor #love #marriage

We expect our spouses to fill voids in our lives or hearts that only God can fill. Unmet expectations reduce a journey expected to be amazing to ordinary. Unmet expectations breed hurt feelings, misunderstanding, and unresolved conflict. ↗

— Justin Davis

#faith #marriage #faith

It is the small, mundane choices we make every day that cause the biggest difference ↗

— Justin Davis

#faith #marriage #faith

Judgments are like a snowball. They stick to you. As time rolls along, the snowball becomes a boulder and then an avalanche. ↗

— John Kuypers

#happiness #marriage #non-judgment #relationships #faith

Neither Emma's tears nor her rage were enough to make Joseph monogamous, however; nor were the prevailing mores of the day. He kept falling rapturously in love with women not his wife. And because that rapture was so wholly consuming, and felt so good, it struck him as impossible that God might possibly frown on such a thing. ↗

— Jon Krakauer

#plural-marriage #religion #faith

[Nessa] didn’t know how to disagree with a preacher, or if she was even allowed to, so she merely wrote, “Thank you, anyway, kind sir, but I am not going to marry you. ↗

— Kristiana Gregory

#faith

Women have married because it was necessary, in order to survive economically, in order to have children who would not suffer economic deprivation or social ostracism, in order to remain respectable, in order to do what was expected of women because coming out of "abnormal" childhoods they wanted to feel "normal," and because heterosexual romance has been represented as the great female adventure, duty, and fulfillment. We may faithfully or ambivalently have obeyed the institution, but our feelings - and our sensuality - have not been tamed or contained within it. ↗

— Adrienne Rich

#marriage #norms #faith

Maybe the best thing we can do for our spouses is give them permission to forgive themselves. ↗

— Justin Davis

#faith #forgiveness #marriage #faith