Marriage is "Dynamic, Not Static"

Holly Hinshelwood, a friend who served with me this summer, let me borrow a book entitled "Let Me Be A Woman" by Elizabeth Elliot which was written to her only daughter as a wedding gift.  It holds great wisdom and has been timely truth as Ron and I navigate the waters of our first year of marriage.  I was reading this morning and the following passage really hit home so I thought I would share it.

"Marriage is a dynamic, not a static relationship.  It gets either better or worse.  As people either grow or deteriorate, relationships between them must grow or deteriorate.  A common explanation offered for marital incompatibility is 'we outgrew each other.' It's been said that if a couple doesn't grow together they grow apart.  But for the couples who have in all seriousness said their vows before God and in the presence of witnesses the possibility of growing apart need not be allowed.  It need never be something which 'happens to' them, as though they were bystanders injured by some force which they were powerless to protect themselves from.  They have willed to love and live together.  They stand, not helpless, but in relation to God, each responsible to fulfill the vows to the other.  Each determines to do the will of God so that together they move toward the 'measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ."  And, if God is viewed as the apex of a triangle of which they are the two base points, movement towards Him necessarily decreases the distance between them.  Drawing near to God means drawing near to each other, and this means growth and change.  They are being changed into the same image of glory to glory.  There is no such thing as stagnation or that relatively innocent-sounding word 'incompatibility.'
There are tensions.  The strength of the great cathedral lies in the thrust and counterthrust of its buttresses and arches.  Each has its own function and each its peculiar strength.  This is the way I see the dynamics of a good marriage.  It is not strength pitted against weakness.  It is two kinds of strength, each meant to fortify the other in special ways.  It is not weakness for the boat to submit itself to the rules of sailing.  That submission is  her strength.  It is the rules that enable the boat to utilize her full strength, to harness the wind and thus take to herself the wind's strength.  It was not weakness in the Son of God that made him obey the will of the Father.  It was power - the power of His own will to will the Father's will."