The fate of a marriage is in the hands of the partners in the marriage....

[Disillusioned]

This is from an online marriage counseling service my husband looked into. They send periodic articles that are meant to provoke thinking about marriage.

Take a look at your hands.
Did you do it? Don't just read on. Take a good
look at your hands.
I'll get back to your hands in a moment.
This past weekend my wife and I were away for one
of our Romantic Retreats. We went to Havre de
Grace, MD, a quaint old town, and we stayed in a
small 2-story cottage.
On Sunday, while we strolled through the tree
lined streets admiring the old Victorian Inns, we
passed one that was hosting an outdoor wedding.
The aisle for the bride and groom started at the
sidewalk and ended at the wedding canopy just 50
feet from the street. We happened to walk by just
as the ceremony began. I, of course, was
interested in what the pastor would say to the
young bride and groom.
Wedding ceremonies are a time for idealism not
realism; so I wasn't expecting to hear profound
words from the pastor. But to my surprise, she
led the bride and groom through a meaningful
"exercise" and offered them sound advice. I'm
going to paraphrase and use my own words, but
essentially here's what happened.
The pastor acknowledged that brides and grooms
usually gaze into each others eyes with heartfelt
emotion (she paused to notice that that's exactly
what the bride and groom in front of her were
doing). She spoke about the innocence of that
look and the sea of feelings shared without a
word ever spoken. But then the pastor kindly
asked the bride and groom to bow their heads and
to look at their hands.
It's amazing how the energy in a place can shift
in a moment. When the bride and groom turned
their attention from each other's eyes to their
hands it was as if the pastor had transported
them from a fairytale to a drama. And then the
pastor explained as follows.
You decided to spend the rest of your life
together because of your FEELINGS. But the rest
of your life together will be decided by your
ACTIONS.
"Take a good look at your hands," the pastor
requested of them. "Because it's what you DO in
the years ahead that will determine what you SEE
in each other's eyes."
In other words, what you see is NOT what you get.
What you DO is what you will see.
We all want to gaze into our spouse's eyes and
feel the depth of their love. But in the long
term, those looks are not because we met Mr. or
Mrs. Right; it's because we did RIGHT and because
we earned the right over time to see that love in
each other's eyes.