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When you get married you're supposed to love each other. Scripture teaches to love your neighbor as yourself. But if a person never accepts God's love and learns how to accept herself, then she doesn't really have anything to give away. It's the same with joy in marriage. I can't have joy in my relationship with Dave if I don't have joy within myself. One of the greatest things that helped my marriage was learning how to accept, love, and be content with myself.

How did you do that?

Through studying Scripture and realizing that I've been made right with God through the blood of Christ. Years ago, even though I was already a Christian, I still often felt as though something was wrong with me. Many people with whom I speak today feel the same way. They're trying to be like someone else; they're comparing or competing. They're always taking inventory of what they've done wrong. And yet the Bible tells us that when we make mistakes, if we admit them and repent, then we're totally forgiven. God remembers our sin no more. And we have right-standing with him.

God also showed me that I'm responsible for my personal joy, and that my joy has to be in him—not in people or in circumstances. Satan can play around with our circumstances. So if I'm waiting for my circumstances to give me continual joy then I'm going to be in a difficult condition, because nobody ever knows on a given day what's going to happen.

Also, people are always going to disappoint us from time to time simply because they're people. It helped my marriage when I stopped expecting my husband to be perfect. So often we pick our spouse apart and try to change him rather than enjoy him. I don't think we can enjoy our marriage if we don't learn how really to enjoy our spouse. That doesn't mean that your spouse is perfect and doesn't need to change. But it's not our job to change people. It's our job to pray for them and it's God's job to change them.

When Dave and I first got married, I was a mess. I didn't know what love was. I was selfish, self-centered, controlling, angry, and filled with shame. I was always looking for Dave to make me happy, and when he didn't, I'd often become angry. But the thing I noticed about Dave was that no matter what I did, he wouldn't let me steal his joy. He was solid and stable, one of the hallmarks of a mature Christian. I learned a lot from his example.

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