Read Beyond Ordinary: When a Good Marriage Just Isn't Good Enough for Free Online Page B

by our spouses—emotionally, physically, and spiritually.
    This passage reminds me that our vision and dreams for our marriages aren’t too big; they are actually too small. We can’t outdream our Creator when it comes to our marriages. We often settle for ordinary when God longs for us to experience extraordinary. Genesis 2 shouts to us, “You’re not crazy!” The longing we have for a rich and fulfilling marriage has been given to us by God. Our desire to be fully known and loved comes from a God who knows us fully and loves us anyway. This passage is a mandate for us to not settle for anything less than extraordinary:
    ex•traor•di•nary
    a: going beyond what is usual, regular, or customary
    b: exceptional to a very marked extent 1
    Maybe you’re asking yourself, What on earth does it mean to have an extraordinary marriage? What sticks out to Trisha and me in this definition is the phrase going beyond what is usual . That most likely describes what your dating life was. A man might open the car door, think up unique places to eat, and always plan ahead to create time together that was even better than the time before. A woman might surprise her man by cooking his favorite meal, buying him tickets to his favorite game, or choosing to go to an action movie rather than a chick flick. Couples often wonder why it was so fun to date each other but why that same excitement feels so unrealistic for married life.
    Where would you rate your marriage in the area of extraordinar y ? Can you think of a recent time you had an extraordinary experience with your spouse? If yes, what made it feel extraordinary? If your answer is no, what comes to mind as to why extraordinary experiences don’t happen for you?
    GREAT AT FALLING IN LOVE, ILL-EQUIPPED TO STAY IN LOVE
    We are really good at falling in love. But what we see reflected in the divorce rate is that we are really bad at staying in love. We knowhow to get married happy; we aren’t really good at staying happily married. There are a few reasons why over time we tend to drift into unintentionality.
    The first is familiarity. Think about the car you drive today. Do you remember when you first bought that car? No one was going to eat in it. You were going to change the oil every twenty-five hundred miles. You washed it twice a week. You made the kids sit on plastic so they wouldn’t mess up the pristine seats. But after a period of time, without even realizing it, you treated your new car as you did your old car. You stopped washing it twice a week and just waited for it to rain. The kids now eat snacks from yesterday’s leftover McDonald’s off the floor. Once the shine wears off, the glitter fades, and the familiarity sets in, you treat things differently. We do the same with our spouses.
    The second reason it is hard to stay in love is that we live at a point of exhaustion. As we get older, our energy levels go down while our responsibilities go up. Marriage takes a lot of energy. It takes energy to listen. It takes energy to resolve conflict. It takes energy to put someone else’s needs ahead of your own. It takes energy to raise kids. Because we are exhausted, we think we can neglect our marriages and stay in love.
    But remember the equation we gave at the beginning of the chapter: time + unintentionality = ordinary.
    NEW & NOT IMPROVED
    We mentioned before that one of the things that helped us develop in our dating relationship was traveling together. Not only did we travel for sports, but each weekend we would travel to a little church in Indiana and lead youth group together. We logged a lot of miles. The drive from central Illinois to central Indiana in the winter is flat and open. There isn’t much to see while driving back and forth. There are just miles and miles of cornfields between cities.
    One Sunday while we were driving back to school, I (Justin) was not paying close attention to the road, and we drove through a flock of birds taking flight. Birds