What Do We Want Our Marriage To Be?

To understand the importance of preparation, consider a garden. When you see a beautiful garden you know that the gardeners have three qualities: desire, design, and determination. With only one or two of the three, beautiful gardens never happen. They certainly aren’t automatic. No gardener will leave the process to chance, because chance has never produced ordered beauty.

Loving, lasting marriages are the same. They don’t happen automatically. So let’s consider those Three Ds.

Desire:
1. Please answer Yes or No: Both of us expect this marriage to last the rest of our lives. Do you have any reservations about your answer?

Design:
1. Think of a marriage you greatly admire. What qualities (characteristics) do you see in that marriage that you would want to have in your own marriage?

2. What qualities have you seen in other marriages that you never want to see in your marriage?

Determination:
Determination means persistent effort for positive results.

1. Thinking again about the marriage you said you greatly admire, how do you think the couple built that marriage?

2. Would other people think of you as a determined person?

3. Is the person you are planning to marry a determined person? How do you know that?

4. What are some goals you have reached through determination? What kept your determination strong?

5. Is determination ever a bad quality? Is it the same as stubbornness?

6. What are some of the greatest challenges you have overcome? Write some down and talk about them this week with each other.

7. Is the goal of a strong and lasting marriage important to you right now?

8. Do you believe it will always be important?

9. What could cause that goal to become less important to you?

10. What can you do to make sure that a strong and lasting marriage is always important to you?

— Remember: What we neglect will decay. What we nurture will develop.—