On a blazing hot afternoon in the summer of 2007, Pete (39) and Kelly (25) Totushek stood beneath a floral archway before hundreds of family and friends and pledged their undying devotion to one another. Theirs was truly a match made in Heaven; the two met while serving as youth leaders at church and to the delight of all, their friendship slowly blossomed into love.

Still in the honeymoon stage, Pete and Kelly are hopelessly starry-eyed. Kelly says, “We still love everything the other person does!” Sadly, that feeling isn’t shared by all Christian couples. In a recent study, Barna Research Group concluded that Christians are as likely to divorce as their unsaved counterparts. “Happily ever after” has become a worn out clichÈ.

So how can you improve the odds that your marriage will last a lifetime? Three couples—all at various stages of marriage—share some of their greatest matrimonial challenges and successes.

Love, trust, and respect are the foundational pillars of any successful relationship. Yet to many couples, those characteristics can be elusive. Can you honestly say you love your spouse just the way he or she is? Do you embrace the good points and bad points? If we are being brutally honest, most of us can’t answer that question in the affirmative. Everyone has quirky idiosyncrasies, unusual philosophies, and irritating habits you won’t immediately see on the surface. It takes living together to discover them.

Thankfully we have an instruction manual—the Bible. How many times have you been to a wedding and heard 1 Corinthians 13 recited and thought, “Not again!”? It is probably the most frequently read wedding Scripture because it has some amazing things to say about what true love is. Scripture also identifies the ingredients for a satisfying marriage: united purpose, faithfulness, commitment, sacrifice, understanding, love, communication, and mutual submission.

Good communication is a critical success factor. “Don’t be afraid to talk to each other about anything,” recommends Pete. “This is your soul mate—even better than your best friend!”

Of course, the key to a lasting marriage is to pick the right partner to begin with—the one God has created just for you. “We were friends for two years before we started dating. Once we started dating, I already knew she was the one for me and vice-versa,” says Pete.

Heidi and Matt have been husband and wife for more than 26 years, but much of their marriage has been far from happy. “It’s been tough. I married a man—a boy—who had serious alcohol problems and I didn’t know it. I just didn’t have the life experience to recognize it as a problem,” she remembers.

It took a crisis of epic proportions to get Matt to quit drinking—checking their 12-year-old son into a treatment facility. His mother had found his Cub Scout canteen full of alcohol.

When they brought their son to rehab his father agreed to an assessment of his own. He wound up checking himself in. Matt has been sober for 12 years, but the fallout from his behavior is still evident. Now 25 and 23, the kids have substance abuse and legal problems of their own, along with unresolved issues with their father.

Heidi is struggling too. “My codependency is a battle every day. Just as it’s a battle for him not to lapse into his alcoholic rages and lash out and be hurtful, it’s a struggle for me not to go and hide in the corner and say, ‘Maybe if I don’t make a noise he won’t see me and I won’t be a target any more.’ We’ve got a lot to overcome. It’s been 12 years and it’s never going to go away completely.”

Heidi has stuck it out because of her faith and for the sake of their sons. “Even though they’re out of the house, I know the vast majority of their friends’ families are from broken homes. To have one more loose brick kicked out of the foundation of their shaky spirits—it’s hard to do that to them. So I’m sticking it out. I don’t know what else to call it,” she says.

All couples have challenges, some of them small and manageable—like newlyweds Pete and Kelly learning how to occupy the same space—to others that are seemingly insurmountable, like addiction.

Today couples are getting married later in life and are more set in their ways. That was a big problem for Lisa. “I think my greatest challenge has been to relinquish my independence. I was 32 years old when we got married and I had lived by myself since I was 22. I realized I’m not the only person in the house and I have to give a little bit in order to expect a little bit.”

Finances are the number one reason cited for divorce in this country. No doubt, handling money is a huge challenge for most couples. It certainly was for Mike and Lisa, who have been married for more than a dozen years. “Neither of us is really responsible financially, so taking two irresponsible people and learning how to get the bills paid and raise two children was difficult.”

Once children come into the mix, many couples also argue about how to discipline them. “A lot of times we don’t see eye to eye on the extent of the punishment,” says Lisa. “Should the consequence be ‘You go sit in the corner for an hour’ or ‘You lose TV privileges for a week’? It was about trying to come to that middle road between letting them get away with everything and wanting them to get away with nothing.”

Undoubtedly there will be heartache ahead for any marriage; jobs will be lost, loved ones will die, and love will be tested. But God created marriage so we can walk through life together. That’s why we promise to love and cherish one another in sickness and in health, for richer for poorer. Otherwise at the first sign of trouble we’d bolt and head for greener pastures.

Lisa and Mike recently have had a spiritual epiphany. For the majority of their 12-year marriage they didn’t go to church or practice their faith—primarily out of disinterest, but also because Mike’s job required him to work every Sunday. One day he told Lisa he had quit his job; he wanted to free up Sundays so they could go to church again. Lisa begrudgingly agreed to go for the sake of the boys. “Two weeks later I realized that it was for me too. We joined that church and it has been the most wonderful experience in my life. That was a victory for us. We needed this experience to teach us to love each other again. We had a very tense, very unstable relationship.”

Today, God is the focus of their marriage and their lives. Now there is less tension in their home, their children are behaving better, and there’s not nearly the emotional upheaval there used to be.

Mike and Lisa have seen the difference putting Christ at the center of marriage can make. “The best piece of advice anybody could give any couple is to make sure you share a like faith and center your relationship around our heavenly Father. Don’t let anybody or anything dissuade you from that,” says Lisa.

If one of you is actively practicing your faith but the other does not embrace the same beliefs, you are what the Bible calls “unequally yoked.” Heidi and Matt do not share a faith, which is the cause of many of their problems. “My faith is very alive and always has been. And he doesn’t have that. It’s tough because he just doesn’t get it, nor does he seek a relationship with Christ in his life. He thinks if he believes he is saved, then that’s good enough. And that’s very sad,” she reflects.

She continues, “I’m seeing little glimpses of hope and all I can do is continue to pray that the Lord will make himself very real to Matt and he will recognize that there’s something missing in him, begin to turn to seek what he’s missing, and hopefully see what I’ve found.”

There’s no question that focusing on God in your marriage can sometimes be tough. If you think praying, worshiping, and studying take too much time, know that in the long run, going to God first will save you countless headaches later on.

Newlyweds Pete and Kelly figured that out early. Pete says, “We are involved as youth leaders at our church, we go to church together, go to small group together, pray together, and are open with each other about our relationship with Christ.”

Having God at the center of your marriage doesn’t mean the rain won’t fall and life will be easy, but with him at the helm, you will be able to weather any storm. |L