My Marriage Analogy

A couple of years ago, my wife and I went through a Marriage Course. After the course, the leaders asked my wife and I to give a breif pitch, describing the course to an informational session for the next course. I really like what I said at that time and I thought I should document it before it disappears in the cobwebbed mess that is my brain.

"So many people compare marriage to a foundation. I think that analogy is horrible. My house has a foundation. I looked at it when I bought the house. I even hired someone to look at the foundation, to make sure it was sound. But since then, I maybe look at it once a year, if that. I assume that since it was strong when I bought the house, it will remain strong. Recently, I read a book that was a historical fiction. It was set in the 1700's and at one point the main character sailed across the Atlantic. He commented that the sailers on that ship were constantly working. Even when the weather was calm, they busied themselves patching sails or mending rope or cleaning and replacing parts of the ship. In fact, he said the only way to tell the age of the ship was to look at the dishes in the galley, because everything else on the ship had been replaced. The sailers did this when the weather was calm because they knew that when the weather got rough, their very lives depended on that ship being string and dependable. This is a better analogy for a marriage. Strengthen is when you can, keep it new and fresh and alive, so that when times are bad and you need something to rely on, you don't find yourself stuck in a boat with a stranger."