THE SHEPHERD’S CORNER

I don’t know about you but I did—in a particular period of my life—think that I had married the wrong person. It was 25 years ago, at a time when relocating to a new place, raising three children under 6, starting a new job, having little support, all came crashing down on Santy and me like a huge brick over our heads. We bickered and lost patience with each other, and it was then the thought surged.

Looking back I am glad that I didn’t give in. I remembered how Santy and I prayed for God’s guiding hands upon our relationship and how clear it was to me that she was the woman that God had brought into my life. It turned out to be that I am not alone. J.R.R. Tolkien, the writer of The Lord of the Rings, writes, “Nearly all marriages, even happy ones, are mistakes: in the sense that almost certainly . . . both partners might have found more suitable mates.”

Tolkien’s words came out of a letter he wrote to his son—a wise advice, I should say. And, he wrote that not as a lesson learned from multiple attempts of finding the “right” one. No, he based his advice on his decades-long marriage. You see, Tolkien was in love with his wife Edith from his teens until her death at 82.

Is there someone more suitable to us than our spouse? Possibly, yes! But, at the end of the day what makes a marriage work is not about finding the right and the most suitable one but rather it’s about making us the right and the most suitable one to our spouse.
You see, we can always find mistakes and believe that we have made a mistake in marrying our spouse. Perhaps, but still the question that remains is, “Have we done our best to be the most suitable one to them?” Maybe not. Rightly Tolkien concludes, “The real soul mate is the one you are actually married to.”

Pastor Paul