Of Duck Hunters and Marriage...

My husband and I just moved across the country. As part of the move, we decided that we wanted to save money and not get a cable or satellite TV package, so we don't want much "current" TV these days and it's worked out just fine for us. But so many of our friends and family are obsessed with the Duck Dynasty show, I have had to go read about it :-)

Yesterday an article popped up about Duck Dynasty and the cast marriages, so I went off to learn more about what makes these guys tick and why so many of my loved ones watch this show. I learned that the stars have all been married for a long time (and they married young at that). At least one of the marriages had some pretty significant problems at one point, with an alcoholic husband throwing out his family - only to beg them to come back. What the wife, Kay, said about her motivations for reconciling grabbed me. Kay said that her grandmother would say "One man, one wife, for life".

I'm not here to tell you what the Bible says about living with abusive or alcoholic spouses. The severity spectrum is too great to sum up every case in one li'l ole blog. The focus I did want to have was this: marriage can be really hard, but there could be great rewards for not giving up.

That reminds me of a quote I recently read:

"More marriages might survive if the partners realized that sometimes the better comes after the worse" - Doug Larson

And all this reminds me of how precious metals are refined - through heat. You don't find pretty, gleaming gold and silver just sitting around in mines. It's mixed in with all sorts of other junk that detracts from the beauty of the precious metal. In order to get pure gold, the heap of good and bad all go through an intense heat ... And out comes the shiny gold. Your marriage might be the mix of junk and precious metal, and an ordeal could be the fire. The ordeal could purify your marriage, leaving it with only the good stuff. I didn't just come up with that analogy - God uses it to describe his people throughout the Bible (see 1st Peter 1:6-7 or Isaiah 48:10). And you can do an internet search (or just go here) to learn more about the refining process.