Snippit on Love of Parents for one another...

Today I was looking through some things, trying to decide what to write on. I stumbled onto this: "The greatest need of your children is to experience the love of their parents for each other." How true this is. We know from experience that children from a divorced family are more likely to get divorced, etc. so we know that the dynamics of parental relationships do make a difference in the way children see the world - and indeed live in it.

I have wondered how my children see my relationship with my husband. We are like other typical married couples. We do not always agree, we argue (sometimes loudly), we pick at each other, we annoy each other. But we also love each other - unconditionally. We show affection in front of our children, we laugh together and we do live life together. But how do the children see it? Do they only remember the arguments and the bad stuff? Even though that is less often the case in our marriage is that "louder" in the memories of my children then all the good stuff?

Out of the mouths of babes. I saw my teenage son, on a website questionnaire, state that his parents were "in love". Not just that we love each other but really in love. That made my heart sing, because then I knew that regardless of the struggles we face in a marriage, in family life, in the world around us, my children are seeing that their parents really do love each other.

That gives me hope for their future. Marriage is a commitment, not just a sharing of lives. It takes commitment to keep it together, there are times in life when it would be much easier to walk away from the troubles that come when your life is not just your own anymore. When you throw in that second person and then together you bring children into this world. Commitment is the key and at times the only thing that stands between continuing on the same path together and divorce.

Commitment is not as pretty a thought as love, we can't picture a teenage girl going around school writing I am committed to so and so with quite the same sparkle in her eye as we see when they insist that they are in love. But commitment is the key, and that is what I want to make sure that my children understand. Not just that mom and dad love each other, but that we are committed to our lives together, and to them.

I want them to understand that a commitment is not something to be broken when things get tough but that it is the glue - the super glue - that keeps everything together. As we have grown together, and the longer we have been married the less we have had to rely on the superglue. That is so nice. But the superglue kept us together when nothing else could have.

Commitment is the key.