Tim LaHaye - How to Be Happy Though Married

CHAPTER I.

HOW TO BE HAPPY THOUGH MARRIED*

How delicious is the winning Of a kiss at love's beginning, When two mutual hearts are sighing For the knot there's no untying^!

T. CAMPBELL.

Deceive not thyself by over-expecting happiness in the married state. Look not therein for contentment greater than God will give, or a creature in this world can receive, namely, to be free from all inconveniences. Marriage is not like the hill Olympus, wholly clear, without clouds. FULLER.

" How to be happy though married." This was the quaint title of one of Skelton's sermons, which would certainly cause a momentary cloud of indignation, not to say of alarm, to pass over the minds of a newly-married couple, should they discover it when skimming through a collection of old volumes on the first wet day of their honeymoon.

"Two young persons thrown together by chance, or brought together by artifice, exchange glances, reciprocate civilities, and go home to dream of each other. Finding themselves rather uncomfortable apart, they think they necessarily must be happy together." But there is no such necessity. In marriage the measure of our happiness is usually in proportion to our deserts.

No man e'er gained a happy life by chance, Or yawned it into being with a wish.

This, however, is just what many novices think they can do in reference to matrimony. They fancy that

6 HOW*TQ''BE HAUPY. THOUGH MARRIED.

it has a magic power of confeiiing happiness almost in spite "of themselves,-'and ?re. quite surprised when experience teaches them that domestic felicity, like everything else worth having, must be worked for must be earned by patient endurance, self-restraint, and loving consideration for the tastes, and even for the faults, of him or her with whom life is to be lived.

And yet before the first year of married life has ended, most people discover that Skelton's subject, " How to be happy though married," was not an unpractical one. Then they know that the path upon which' they have entered may be strewn with thorns instead of with roses, unless mutual forbearance and mutual respect guard the way. The old bachelor who said that marriage was " a very harmless amusement" would not have pronounced such an unconditional judgment had he known more about it. Matrimony is a harmless and a happy state only when careful precaution is taken to defend the domain of the affections from harshness and petulance, and to avoid certain moral and physical pitfalls.

Like government, marriage must be a series of compromises; and however warm the love of both parties may be, it will very soon cool unless they learn the golden rule of married life, "To bear and to forbear/' In matrimony, as in so many other things, a good beginning is half the battle. But how easily may good beginnings be frustrated through infirmity of temper and other causes, and then we must "tread those steps with sorrow which we might have trod with

joy."

"I often think," says Archdeacon Farrar, "that most of us in life are like many of those sightseers who saunter through this (Westminster) Abbey. Their listless look upon its grandeur and its memorials furnishes an illustration of the aspect which we present to higher powers as we wander restlessly through the solemn

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minster-aisles of life.... We talk of human misery; how many of us derive from life one-tenth part of what God meant to be its natural blessedness? Sit out in the open air on a summer day, and how many of us have trained ourselves to notice the sweetness and the multiplicity of the influences which are combining for our delightthe song of birds; the breeze beating balm upon the forehead; the genial warmth; -the delicate odour of ten thousand flowers ? "

What is said here of life in general.is also true of married life. We go through the temple of Hymen without noticing, much less appreciating, its beauty. Certainly few people gain as much happiness from their marriage as they might. They expect to find happiness without taking any trouble to make it, or they are so selfishly preoccupied that they cannot enjoy. In this way many a husband and wife only begin to value, each other when death is at hand to separate them.

In married life sacrifices must be ever going on if we would be happy. It is the power to make another glad which lights up our own face with joy. It is the power to bear another's burden which lifts the load from our own heart. To foster with vigilant, self-denying care the development of another's life is the surest way to bring into our own joyous, stimulating energy. Bestow nothing, receive nothing; sow nothing, reap nothing; bear no burden of others, be crushed under your own. If many people are miserable though married, it is because they ignore the great law of self-sacrifice that runs through all nature, and expect blessedness from receiving rather than from giving. They reckon that they have a right to so much service, care, and tenderness from those who love them, instead of asking how much service, care, and tenderness they can give.

No knowledge is so well worth acquiring as the science of living harmoniously for the most part of a

* HOW TO BE HAPPY THOUGH MARRIED.

life with another, which we might take as a definition of matrimony. This science teaches us to avoid faultfinding, bothering, boring, and other tormenting habits. "These are only trifling faults," you say. Yes, but trifles produce domestic misery, and domestic misery is no trifle.

Since trifles make the sum of human things, And half our misery from those trifles springs, Oh ! let the ungentle spirit learn from thence, A small unkindness is a great offence. To give rich gifts perhaps we wish in vain, But all may shun the guilt of giving pain.

Husband and wife should burn up in the bonfire of first-love all hobbies and " little ways" that could possibly prevent home from being sweet. How happy people are, though married, when they can say of each other what Mrs. Hare says of her husband in Memorials of a Quiet Life: "I never saw anybody so easy to live with, by whom the daily petty things of life were passed over so lightly; and then there is a charm in the refinement of feeling which is not to be told in its influence upon trifles."

A married pair should be all the world to each other. Sydney Smith's definition of marriage is well known : - " It resembles a pair of shears, so joined that they cannot be separated, often moving in opposite directions, yet always punishing any one who comes between them." Certainly those who go between deserve to be punished ; and in whatever else they may differ, married people should agree to defend themselves from the well-meant, perhaps, but irritating interference of friends. Above all, they should remember the proverb about the home-washing of soiled linen, for, as old Fuller said, "Jars concealed are half reconciled; while, if generally known, *tis a double task to stop the breach at home and men's mouths abroad."

,Why should love-making end with courtship, and

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of what use are conquests if they are not guarded? If the love of a life-partner is of far more value than our perverse fancies, it is the part of wisdom to restrain these in order to keep that. A suggestion was recently made from an American pulpit that there was room for a new society which should teach husband and wife their duty to each other. "The first article of the constitution should be that any person applying for membership should solemnly covenant and agree that throughout married life he or she would carefully observe and practice all courtesy, thoughtfulness, and unselfishness that belong to what is known as the * engagement' period. The second article should be that neither member of a conjugal partnership should listen to a single word of criticism of the other member from any relative whatever, even should the words of wisdom drop from the lips of father, mother, brother, or sister. The rules of the new society need not extend beyond these two, for there would be nothing in the conduct of members in good standing to require other special attention."