Author Unknown
At the end of the wedding party, a bride’s mother gave her a newly opened bank savings passbook, with $1000 deposited in it.
She told her, “My dear daughter, take this passbook. Keep it as a record of your married life. Whenever something happy and memorable happens in your new life, put some money in it and write what it is about next to the amount. The more memorable the event is, the more money you should put in. I’ve done the first one for you today. Do the others with your husband. When you look back after many years, you will know how much happiness you’ve both shared.”
The woman shared this with her husband after getting home. Both of them thought it was a great idea and couldn’t wait to make the next deposit. This is what the passbook looked like after a while:
7 Feb: $100, his first birthday celebration after marriage
1 Mar: $300, she gets a salary raise
20 Mar: $200, vacation
15 Apr: $2000, She’s pregnant!
1 Jun: $1000, He gets the big promotion
and so on…
However, as the years went by, they began fighting and arguing over trivial things. They didn’t communicate much with each other again. Each regretted that they had married the nastiest person in the world. There was no more love.
One day the woman opened up to her mother. “Mom, we can’t stand it anymore. We have decided to divorce. I can’t imagine how I decided to marry this guy!”
Her mother replied, “Sure, that’s no big deal. Do whatever you want, if you really can’t stand it. But before that, do one thing. Remember the savings passbook I gave you on your wedding day? Take out all the money there and spend it first. You shouldn’t keep any record of such a poor marriage.”
She agreed with her mother. So she went to the bank and was waiting in the queue to close the account. While she was waiting, she took a look at the passbook record. She looked, and looked and looked. Then the memory of all the previous joyful moments came back to her. Her eyes were filled with tears.
She left and went home. When she got home, she handed the passbook to her husband and asked him to spend the money before getting divorced.
So the next day, he went to the bank and was waiting in the queue to cancel the account. While he was waiting, he took a look at the passbook record. He also looked, and looked and looked. The memory of all the previous joyful moments came back to him. His eyes were welled up with tears.
He left the bank and went home. He gave the passbook back to her. Lo, inside she found a new deposit of $5000 with a line: ‘This is the day I realized how much I’ve loved you throughout all these years. How much happiness you’ve brought me.’
They hugged each other and cried, putting the passbook back into the safe.
Marriage is not a game; it is not easy, but it is beautiful. You will fight and argue, this is normal, because both of you came from different backgrounds and were raised by different parents, perhaps on different beliefs and moral. Therefore, you cannot expect that everything you say will be accepted by your spouse without their opinion being tendered first. So before you give up, think back to the good times and to what brought you together in the first place.
Meditation: Yes, all of you be submissive to one another, and be clothed with humility, for “God resists the proud, But gives grace to the humble.” – 1 Peter 5:5
You will succeed because Jesus loves You!