Maybe purchasing a house is one of your primary goals. But it doesn't matter if you live in a house or an apartment. The quality of the building you live in, even if you're living in the most beautiful mansion with the greatest number of bathrooms, does not make or break your relationship. Your physical dwelling Is not the REAL house you're living in. The words you're speaking - or not speaking - become the real house you live in together. These words above all else determine whether you'll grow old together. Which words or body language are you choosing to speak daily?
The "I love you" - or the stony silence. The "Please forgive me" or the "I am right and you, you stupid piece of work, are wrong. You'd better forgive ME!" The "Don't worry so much about how you look, you're beautiful" or the "Go on a diet, you're not sexually attractive any more." The open arms or the closed fists. The conversation over the dinner table or the separate lives on I Pads and Smart Phones, Facebook and Twitter. The invitation to share a hobby or activity or the "I'm going out with the boys (or the girls)" night after night after night.
Prayer isn't saying a quick Our Father without listening to the words. Prayer isn't sitting impatiently through a church service. Prayer is silently pouring our hearts and our lives out to the One Who listens, and then quietly listening to how He moves our hearts and our minds in response.
If we give up part of our fragile egos and open ourselves in prayer to God, He allows us to participate in His compassionate Vision, so that we can see ourselves and our spouses through His understanding instead of our own. If we ask Him, He will stretch our hearts to hold His endless capacity for mercy, His ongoing capacity for forgiveness, His tender capacity for sensitive love. He will lift us out of our desert of self-absorption and set us down in His garden of caring for others.
You met, you fell in love, you married, because God gave you to each other so you could spend a lifetime to bring each other to Him in Heaven. And Heaven begins in our lifetime. If we love each other with patience, persistence, and prayer, and explore our differences and perplexities with kindness, we will have heavenly moments of peace, contentment, and unutterable happiness right here, right now. And, we'll find out that growing old together, spending our Golden Years together, is truly priceless!