Marriage is fabulously hard. Everybody who has been married knows this. Though years into marriage it still catches us off guard, all of us. And newly married couples, when they discover how hard it is, they seem genuinely surprised. Shocked and disheartened by the fact. Are we doing something wrong? Did I marry the right person? The sirens that lure us into marriage – romance, love, passion, sex, longing, companionship – seem so far from the actual reality of married life we fear we have made a colossal mistake, caught the wrong bus, missed our flight. And so the hardness also comes as something of an embarrassment. (Don’t you feel embarrassed to admit how hard your marriage is?) Maybe it’s just us.

It is normal for marriage to be hard work - even the best of marriages, say John & Stasi Eldredge in their new book… but a good marriage is worth fighting for. Subscribe to Families First to read the whole article.