Many people see us (my husband and I) today and they glory in our success, and they laud and honor us because of what we have accomplished (including 36 years of marriage, three well-educated kids, three grandchildren, and a business of our own) but what they fail to understand is that this doesn’t just happen because you want it to, it takes hard work, commitment, and dogged determination, and even now, we have to wrestle with ourselves at times, and wrestle with each other over issues that affect us, and we have to keep checking the pulse on the relationship, but like I said, “We chose to Stay.” We chose to stay because we were being committed to each other, but first we had to be committed to ourselves and to  the value of the relationship and what it meant to us being together or apart, and then we had to be committed to asking and answering the hard questions and doing the hard work.”

I won’t ever tell anybody that it’s easy, because it’s not…and this is not a decision that anybody could make for you, it’s one you got to make for yourself, because when the day is done, the only person that you have to live with is you, and anybody who has been in a relationship of any kind wherein you have invested your heart will tell you that … and if they’re honest, they’ll also tell you that they have remained guarded…but the big question is whether you can bury the hatchet so deep in forgiveness that you will not yield to the temptation to take it out and hack them as soon as something doesn’t go your way … and that, I believe, is the greatest struggle of all, and then, from my experience, the only thing that can help you through that is time, space, purposefulness, and the Grace and Mercy of Almighty God.