Married? You are a gardener -- good or bad.

Last summer I skipped having a garden .   The year before had been a disaster: the seeds had been planted, they had sprouted and grown, but weeds were not pulled and it was soon a jungle.  I had to fight my way through to find zucchini and peppers.
This all came back to me as I read Joel Beeke's tender, frank book on marriage called Friends and Lovers:

Likewise, cultivating friendship in marriage is hard work, yet most rewarding. Many people in our culture think that love is something you fall into and therefore can easily fall out of.  That might be true of passing emotions, but true friendship relies on cultivation: uprooting bad attitudes, planting daily seeds of love towards one another, pulling out weeds and eliminating pests that threaten to choke the relationship, watering the tender plants with daily prayer, and then taking time to reap a harvest of love and enjoyment in each other's company.

I neglected the tending of my zucchini and peppers, but the tending of my marriage is not optional.  I lean on him who helps. -- Jeannette