Lasting Love

I really loved this piece written by my honey for our picture blog. Thought I'd share it for those of you who didn't see it over there.

By David Fry

We believe commitment is the glue that holds marriage together. Sadly, most people miss out on the joy of being together with the one they love. Once a couple is married too often the individuals begin to develop individual commitments that slowly but steadily pull the marriage apart. The things that they once enjoyed and the sights and sounds that once drew them to one another are replaced by individual interests, hobbies, jobs, and relationships that deteriorate the glue of commitment.

Marriage is about writing a story--the story of two people in love. We are committed to writing one story, not two; one story in which there are two people who are creating a history from which they cannot quickly become detached. We believe that one way to maintain the proper focus in marriage is to enjoy each other. This means sharing interests, ideas, and time doing what both people enjoy. To this end, we seek to spend our time doing what we can enjoy together.

We do not seek recreation for its own sake. Recreation, we believe, serves as an opportunity to rest the mind, recuperate the body, and--for purposes here--to deepen relationship. Jeremy Taylor in his classic Holy Living says it this way:
Do not allow your recreations to take up too much of your time,
but choose those that are healthful, short, transient,
and recreative, designed to refresh you. Avoid games
which require much time or which are apt to steal your
affections for more worthy activity. For to whatever you have
given your affections, you will not grudge to give your time.
God designed marriage to be a means of grace, a means whereby we may be sharpened as individuals in our own relationship with God. In order to prevent our marriage from being a source of strife, we value like passions and interests. This blog represents time and energy that we put into each other. Each picture is in some way or another a glimpse into our lives. They express our way of seeing the world in a thousand words, words that sometimes are not easily spoken.

Though marriage is much more complicated than simply sharing a hobby together, we believe that little things such as this go a long way in sustaining a relationship. The things that we enjoy together help us to enjoy each other. This being so, photography, in our case, is only a recreation. Our leading business is to love our Creator and to enjoy him forever. Let this, therefore,

"Be our leading business and all others occasional employments"
St. John Chrysostom
(Homilies in John)