Photo Source: www.creationswap.com by David Gamboa
I recently saw an interview of a couple celebrating 75 years of marriage. They were asked what was the secret to their marriage. Their answer may surprise you, depending on your point of view.
Their answer was, “We’ve been blessed.” Now some might interpret that to mean they’ve been lucky. Some might believe that the only way to reach a long and happy marriage is to get lucky: lucky in picking the right spouse, lucky in good things happening, lucky in love. But I think that point of view speaks to more of a pessimistic view of life, which certainly won’t help a marriage succeed.
But when I heard this couple say their “secret,” my first thought was, wow what a positive attitude!
“We’ve been blessed,” they said. “We’ve had so many nice things have happened. I’m not going to say we never argued, because we did. You don’t argue and then walk out. You work it out”
We’ve been blessed, seems to me to be less of a statement of good things happening, and more of a statement on their outlook on life. Having blessings doesn’t mean having no problems, or arguments, or difficult times. Being blessed means we acknowledge the bad but look at the positive.
The old adage is to count your blessings. That means we think about our life and we intentionally point out the good things. We name them. We number them. We choose to say, “We’ve been blessed” in the midst of the difficult.