As I was listening to a local radio station on my morning commute the other day, the radio personalities were discussing marriage. The women on the show were trying to convince the skeptical men that marriage was “just a piece of paper”…. as if this was all there was to the union of marriage.

To say that marriage is “just a piece of paper”, is like saying the Super Bowl is “just another game”, or that Jesus was “just a good man”. Seriously! There’s so much more to marriage than the certificate you sign the day of your wedding.

Marriage is a living organism if you will. It requires many things in order to survive.  Some of these requirements include commitment, trust, forgiveness, hard work, compromises and love. Being a wife myself, if I were to fly by the seat of my marriage certificate, then I’d have one very unhappy husband on my hands, not to mention a slowly dying marriage.

Knowing how high the divorce rate is in our country, I do have to wonder if this is the very same viewpoint of others; The belief that marriage doesn’t involve work. We get out of our marriages what we put into them. I’m not saying that if you put in 100% it’s guaranteed to work – you also have to have a partner who’s willing to put in their share as well. But, marriage takes alot of time, energy & effort, and when we put in the work, the payoff is great.