Photo by Frans Van Heerden

There are many reasons I love the institution of marriage, but I especially love how well it holds us accountable to the truth about love. It is indeed true that all relationships should always bring us back to a place of loving people, but there is something about the covenant of marriage that compels us to explore everything that love has to offer (including the unappealing parts of it). I do believe that there is a significant reason some things in the Bible are communicated in a clear manner, things that do not need some form of “interpretation”, cultural context or a 7 days fast to understand. Love is one of those things. In fact, the whole Bible is one big way to show us how love operates and manifests itself in humanity.
In my 6th year of marriage, I have now come to better understand one of the many characteristics of love written in 1 Corinthians 13; Love perseveres, some translations say, “endures all things” and “bears all things”.


When we stand at the altar on our wedding day, we promise to be committed to each other “for better or for worse”, but what we do not comprehend is how worse the “worse” can get. We say this full of conviction and hope, and truly believe that nothing could ever be bigger than what we feel for the person standing in front of us. Overflowing with love, joy and excitement, we maybe do not have the capacity to process what those words mean or the weight they hold in our promise to each other.


The last year of our marriage was heavy for me, we were dealing with so much individual pain that we struggled to pour ourselves into our marriage and to each other. Most of my year was filled with grieving my dad and being unhappy with unmet expectations from my husband, and his was filled with the weight of losing his job, unrealized dreams and having a wife reminding him of how short he is falling as a husband (This is my side of the story anyway). All this created a lot of friction in our home, we eventually got some help and through some tough conversations, the rough patch started to smooth itself out.

There was a point I was considering parting ways with the man I love, the pain seemed bigger at the time. I was making plans in my head and trying to see how life will look like as a single mom. When you are stuck in a rough patch, the anxiety overwhelms you and your mind is unable to see a different reality. You tend to feel suffocated by the prospect of being miserable forever and the only appealing solution is to quit the whole race. I look at where we are now in our marriage and I realize what a tragedy it would have been had we not endured through that period. I started understanding and internalizing “love endures all things” from such a personal place. I thought about how long forever actually is; in this context, if a couple is married for 30 years and experienced a tough 5 years (which probably felt like a lifetime in the moment), were the 25 years of a great marriage not worth fighting for?

It made me think that the concept of being with one person forever is meant to create a safe space for individuals to have seasons where they are unlovable but still feel accepted and sure that love will catch them and endure for them. There is no space for fear if you are the spouse that is afraid of being left for your shortcomings, or a space for pride or ego if you are the spouse that feels tired of receiving the crumbs. There is a balance that demands BOTH parties to be selfless and keep working on their commitment to make it work and a reminder of the promises made to each other.

I sometimes think that our elders almost got it right, the flaw was that it was one sided and it was layered with a lot of abusive traits and intentions. It was also accompanied by the obsession of keeping up facades to avoid the negative things people will say. So I am not addressing what we call “to bekezela” here (a one sided expectation mainly for women), I am perhaps trying to find a healthier way to redeem the concept of not giving up on love.

I will admit that I cannot judge our elders because I have not been married for as long as they have, I have not fully experienced the communities they grew up in and I have not lived in their reality. I just imagined that perseverance in love would look a little different. It should benefit both spouses and be a consistent journey of two people repenting and being held accountable to loving each other well; not a cycle of abusive events where one spouse feels no need to partake in the work or left to not account and be comfortable with not practicing repentance. That does not resemble love for me…. or perhaps it does, I am now thinking of the story of Hosea and how hard it was to wrap my head around. Let’s just say I am not ready to agree with God on that one, so from my side, if that is what love demands, I am not there yet and my perspective is from the place I am currently at.


What I have come to believe is that our love only grows as far as we decide. Our promise only lasts for as long as we allow it to, but every action we choose to take or not take in love is a decision. Sometimes when marriages end, promises break and commitments stop being honored, it is because we decide to stop, it does not just “happen” to us. Yes, you can be the spouse that is walked out on and it won’t be your choice to not be married anymore, but although you did not make the choice, one was still taken for the marriage to end. This way of thinking has given me some comfort in knowing that I control a portion of what happens to the love I hold. I want to encourage us to try and endure when storms do arise, to put in the work and to hold onto the faith that it won’t last forever. We sometimes forget that it’s okay for our love to be tested, to be refined and for us to learn to stand through the seasons that come to build stronger foundations. It’s not that the marriage is destined to end when tough seasons come, perhaps it is the winter necessary to make it stronger. That perspective will help many of us know how to fight well in such moments and allow it to benefit the marriage.

Remember to have the tough conversations, remember to be vulnerable, remember to create a safe space for your partner to be able to come and tell you the heaviest parts of being married to you. Remember to stay faithful through temptation, remember to have fun even when things are hard to face, remember to be kind, to apologise and to correct your wrongs. Remember to respect one other, to not be silent as a form of punishment. Remember to hold each other’s hands when it seems a conversation is spiraling out of control, a reminder that you are both still here. Remember to tell each other assuring words; “I am still here, I am committed, I love you, I love being here with you”.

When you feel like you are drowning and nothing but leaving will help, remember your ability to swim, a day at a time. Your love was worth it back then when you said “I do”, your love is still worth it now. So, if your marriage is currently being tested, remember to hope and endure, the sun will come again.

“Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes in all things and endures all things.”