Pastor Manley Miller

Marriage is for a lifetime. Raising children is for a season.

I repeat.

Marriage is for a lifetime. Raising children is for a season.

I noticed a pattern in my late teens and have seen the trend continue into my adult years. Many parents of my friends were getting separated and divorced when their last child would hit their mid-teens.

I understood why after Dana and I married and had our first child. It is very easy for parents to abandon their focus on their marriage and redirect ALL their attention to raising the kids. Their intentions are good. They want their kids to have a better life than they had. So they have their kids involved in multiple extracurricular activities like piano, football, t-ball, dancing, girl scouts, karate, tutoring, key club, swim team, cross country, basketball, passing camp, advanced knitting, sausage rolling, roller hockey, etc…

Multiply all these activities by multiple children and compound this with work, school, homework, housework, bills, friends, family, birthday parties and your best attempts to have a little fun and you will see why you are busy.

Busyness kills focus. Always.

So what happens is parents lose focus of working on their marriage while raising their kids. When the last kid gets a driver’s license and heads out to chase her adolescent dreams - mommy and daddy look across the room at one another and see someone they don’t know, don’t care about and often don’t even like.

The antidote to the poison is to constantly Re-Focus. The Bible calls this the principle of the Sabbath. After each day God created in Genesis it says he looked at the big picture and said “It is good.”

When you take a look at your marriage right now do you say “It is Fiya.” (I think God actually said this but its hard to translate that from the Old Testament Hebrew)

If yes, keep the focus. If no, center yourself on working at your marriage. This isn’t steroids, its a healthy diet and daily exercise. It takes time, but it will pay off if you remain steadfast.

“Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life. And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.” - Galatians 6:7-9