Keep Walking the Path to Joy

Excerpt taken from I Thought This Would Make Me Happy: How to Fight Less, Forgive Faster, and Cultivate Joy in Your Marriage by Chelsea Damon

One summer while we were still dating, Josh and I were camp counselors. Each week for eight weeks, we ate three meals a day with a new group of rambunctious preteens and teens, led them through daily camp activities, and kept a watchful eye during “free time.” At the ripe old age of twenty, Josh and I felt like we had become parents to ten adolescent girls or boys. Days were filled with activities such as horse riding and canoeing, which many campers were doing for the very first time, and evenings were filled with games, lots of girl talk (for me), hugging those who were homesick, and telling campers that if they didn’t get to sleep, they’d be dog-tired the next morning (okay, I’d be dog-tired the next morning).

While we both agreed that particular summer was an amazing experience, it was nothing short of exhausting. At the end of each week, we had exactly twenty-four hours to go home, shower, sleep, do laundry, and pack up for the start of a new week. On top of this, Josh and I barely saw each other the whole summer. When we applied for the job, I remember thinking how fun it would be to spend the whole summer together. Little did we realize that we were signing up to be sweaty, dirty, and tired, and that we would virtually never see each other until those eight weeks were over.

Marriage can be a lot like that. We go into it expecting one thing but often experience something completely different from what we thought we were signing up for. Maybe we were excited to move on to the next phase in life, to take the next big step in our relationship. Maybe we loved the sense of security and comfort we got from securing our “forever person.” Whatever the case, we all go into marriage with certain expectations about what it will provide us—love, happiness, security, status, or approval. Which makes the hard dose of reality most of us receive within those first few years a shocking blow.

That hard dose of reality is finding out your spouse has more flaws than you originally knew about, realizing your selfishness often has a choke hold on your expectations, or simply learning in real time how you both react to and deal with the tough circumstances life throws your way.

On their wedding day, couples promise to walk through these tough life circumstances together without detonating their marriage: “in sickness and in health, for better or for worse.” And while many couples can promise to never get divorced, what’s much more impressive are the couples who promise to never stop working on their relationship. Couples can agree to stay together for life, but if they never put in the effort to improve themselves and their relationship, they’ll be walking out their lifelong commitment on a difficult and painful road.

The couples whose marriages not only last but thrive are those who don’t settle for not getting divorced. Instead, they agree to constantly assess the state of their own hearts, make difficult changes, forgive each other, and run to God for his showering of grace, love, and wisdom. It’s when couples are mutually willing to lay down their own lives for the sake of displaying the gospel that they not only find the joy that God provides in marriage but also reflect Christ’s self-sacrificial and unconditional love for his church to the world around them.

This is God’s hope for your marriage—and it’s my hope that you are well on your way to that goal. Just as it was for Josh and me the summer we were disillusioned camp counselors, sometimes the work you have to put into your marriage requires much more of you and is much harder than what you thought you had signed up for. It might mean late-night discussions and early-morning prayer and maybe the occasional mid-afternoon breakdown. But as you both seek Christ, you will also find each other along the way. And as you walk that path toward a brighter and more joyful future, you’ll discover much more than simply a happy marriage; you’ll also discover that through laying down your own lives, you are better equipped to make God’s name great through your marriage.

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Order your copy of I Thought This Would Make Me Happy: How to Fight Less, Forgive Faster, and Cultivate Joy in Your Marriage by Chelsea Damon

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