By Ashley McIlwain
We lock our doors. We install high-tech alarm systems. We fasten our seat belts. We wear helmets. We look both ways before crossing the street. We use anti-virus software. We buy guns. We use antibacterial soap.
The truth is, we want to feel safe, so we do everything we can to establish our lives as secure. To protect ourselves from potential harm, damage, and threats, we will go to nearly any length. Worldwide, security system monitoring revenues total about $40 billion, according to Global Industry Analysts. Clearly we value our sense of security.
But out of all the safety precautions you take, which ones are established to protect your marriage? What are you doing to ensure that your relationship with your spouse isn’t invaded by intruders? Ravaged by thieves? Destroyed by avoidable accidents?
It’s easy to think about and act upon our physical and financial well-being, but what are you doing for your relational well-being? How are you protecting and safeguarding your spouse, your marriage, and your family? Because honestly, there are more imminent enemies and threats to your marriage and family than you can imagine or count.
We tend to think of protecting ourselves, our home, and our finances, but when it comes to our marriages, we rarely consider how we can keep the “bad guys” out. In fact, many of us resent any talk of safety. When boundaries and hedges are discussed, many chalk it up to insecurity or mistrust. Granted, there are times when a spouse is indeed insecure or mistrusting, which motivates their desired parameters, and there are extreme cases of control and paranoia that aren’t healthy. That’s not what I’m referencing though.
What I’m addressing is the average marriage trying to survive, thrive, and avoid head on collisions with disaster and devastation. Those can come knocking on our door any day without us inviting them. That’s why I am encouraging all of you married people to protect yourselves and your marriage. To avoid unnecessary disaster and heartache. To do what you can to guard the treasure that your marriage is.
That’s not being fearful, mistrusting, or paranoid. That’s being wise.
1 Corinthians 13:7 tells us that love always protects. Proverbs 22:3 says, “The prudent see danger and take refuge, but the simple keep going and pay the penalty.” Establishing a hedge of protection around our marriage doesn’t guarantee us freedom from pain, heartache, or devastation, but it helps us to do what we can to prevent it and to certainly avoid inviting it.
Many resist the notion of boundaries because they don’t want to be restricted by rules and regulations. They don’t want to be told what they can and cannot do, but they are missing the point. It’s not about restricting; it’s about creating freedom through wisdom. Much like a loving parent creates “rules” for their children to protect him/her and ultimately lead them to a healthier, more fulfilling life with limited baggage, wounds, and heartbreak, husbands and wives should, together, come up with boundaries to do the same for one another and their marriage. It’s about formulating that hedge of protection out of love.
What is it that you and wife and do to guard the precious treasure that your marriage is? How can you place safeguards around it to minimize damage, devastation, and heartbreak? What things can you do to avoid potentially harmful and dangerous situations? These are important questions to figure out the answers to.
Some areas that you might want to establish those boundaries around are:
- Time spent apart
- Internet usage
- Television show & movie content
- Interactions with the opposite sex
- Personal information about your relationship shared with others
- In-law interactions & relationships
- How you speak to one another
- Parenting
- Friends/Inner Circle
- Types of activities to participate in when the other isn’t present
- Calendar load/how many activities you’re involved in
- Money/finances
- Conflict resolution
There are a lot of things than can come between you and your spouse. Sometimes they are avoidable, and sometimes they aren’t. While your marriage cannot be completely sheltered or placed in some bubble devoid of all normal interactions, it can be protected. You can “install” an “alarm system” to prevent intruders and to certainly warn you of them. These safeguards aren’t to keep you from having fun or enjoying life. On the contrary, they are to enable you to do so. When we don’t pick up baggage and suffer wounds, we are more capable of and free to enjoy our life. It’s when we resent those safeguards and refuse them that we incur that unnecessary, painful, and weighty baggage and damage.
Being able to communicate honestly and openly with your spouse is important. To sit down and collectively come up with your own alarm system to protect one another and your marriage is wise. It’s important to consider both sets of feelings and preferences. Together you can work to safeguard your marriage from the intruders and dangers that loom. Your marriage is precious and special, and it’s worth protecting!
Copyright © 2014, Foundation Restoration. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No reproduction allowed without written permission from Foundation Restoration and/or the author.
Great article Ashley! I hadn’t really considered the safety-net of protection necessary around our marriages – understandably there are certain situations to avoid. However I see now how we protect every other aspect of our lives, but rarely the most sacred – our commitment to each other.
Shannon, thanks for your feedback! I’m thrilled that you found encouragement and food for thought from this article! Always great to hear from you!
Simply——excellent. We need to hear it more often and raise the volume.
Thank you so much Greg!
It’s really a fight sometimes, isn’t it, to protect what is so sacred to us? My marriage and my family is something worth fighting for. And the obstacles, they are real. Disguised, even, as our own friends sometimes. “I don’t know why you guys need to…” “Why don’t you…” “Don’t you think you’re being too…” “You don’t need to be so strict with your kids…” HELLO PEOPLE! Satan is knocking on your front door, loudly; doesn’t even bother with the back door anymore. And what does he have? All sorts of “goodies”. Rule #1…I don’t answer the door unless my husband is home…that way we can face whatever (or whomever) is on the other side together.
Kristen, you are so right! I love that philosophy: don’t answer the door unless your husband is home so you can face whatever the enemy throws your ways together! Great stuff! Thanks for sharing 🙂
What a true article. We can all relate. And the areas of conversation that you mentioned areas of conversational conflict at some point in time in your relationships anyway. So I think it’s good to use them as a conversation tool in a positive way. Thanks
Erin, thanks so much for your feedback! Appreciate it 🙂
I wake up for the second time tonight I have insomnia so I thought what better way to spend my time than reading my bible and following this great bible reading plan I’m doing. Then I come across this great article, I remember giving a friend advice it was about words of affirmation and not to withhold a certain thing in marriage due to a disagreement as it will not help but hinder.
She thanked me after and asked me how I knew how to give such wise marital advice and I’m not married so I told her the scripture I had read gave her referance to a book, and gave her your website and said most of it is from littlewifey.com lol.
I get my marital education here and I’m not married haha, but God had spoken to me and gave me a song and a scripture to confirm something to me and so I know I have to prepare, whenever it happens who knows. So thanks again for another article making us women wiser on important topics such as our relationship with God and what a romantic relationship should look like.
Ps: I’m turning 30 April maybe an article on howto stay encouraged being single and 30 haha 😉
Godbless x
I also wanted to tell you lots of amazing things continue to happen I joined a choir and we got to minister in song to people the gospel may not have reached, stages we never dreamed we’d be able to sing gospel on its been incredible. I still have yet to find a permanent church home but I have been under pastoral guidance which is good.
You may or may not remember I spoke to you before I was at a real low I just want you to know I’ll never forget the kindness you showed me and will always appreciate the fact that you let me know you were praying for me, thank you.