Erin Akin Carroll

Last fall, I attended the Influence Conference. I heard Emily Freeman speak, and one of the things she said that stuck with me was, “Write about what makes you cry. Because your tears are tiny messengers from God.”

Gah. So true.

So throughout the months since then, when something has made me cry, I think of it a little differently.

On Sunday night, Ben Affleck won an Academy Award for Best Picture for Argo.

In his acceptance speech, he said, “I want to thank my wife who I don’t usually associate with Iran. I want to thank you for working on our marriage for 10 Christmases. It’s good. It is work but it’s the best kind of work and there’s no one I’d rather work with.”

I noticed on social media that some thought this meant that the Affleck-Garner marriage was in trouble.

Jennifer Garner and Ben Affleck have been married since 2005 and have three children together. I think to acknowledge that marriage is work, and that they choose to work at it means the exact opposite of trouble.

Because marriage is work. And going into it without knowing that it’s work, will leave you disappointed and wondering what happened to the fairy tale you were expecting.

Why did it make me cry?

Because I thought of my own life. And the things we work on every single day.

We work through budget conversations. We work around busy schedules. We work on giving things up for the other person.

I love to blog, but there are days when I only get two or three hours of awake time with my husband. If blogging means that I can’t spend any time with Todd that day, then I don’t blog that day.

Many of our conversations involve trying to convince our three-year-old to stop talking so Mommy and Daddy can finish talking to each other. And sometimes we may not finish our own conversation until we’re lying in bed. And other times we never finish the conversation at all.

Many of our mornings begin with a small child walking into our bedroom and asking to climb in bed with us to watch cartoons.

We work through adjusting as we live with Todd’s grandmother and recognizing that marrying each other also means being committed to the other person’s family. It is love. It is work. It is worship.

These are not the events of a fairy tale. These are the events of a marriage. And it’s a marriage that we work on every single day. When we realize that our calendars have gotten the best of us and not enough time alone has taken away some of our focus on each other, we work to do something to change that.

Our marriage isn’t perfect. It is work.

But, to me, work is worship. I love my husband and I love our marriage. I love our family and what each member of our family means in our marriage. And without work, we’d be a mess.

We were meant to experience struggles. God promised us that we would struggle. Without those struggles, we’d forget our desperate need for Him.

There is mutual responsibility in marriage, and we have to work each day to live up to that responsibility. And that is when love flows freely. From respect and selflessness and patience and forgiveness.

All the really, really difficult things.

1 Corinthians 13:5

(Love) does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.

So, that’s my big thank you to Ben Affleck for showing us, in a world of happily ever afters and immediate gratification, that it is normal to sacrifice things and a certain lifestyle for marriage. It is worth it to give up so many of our comforts for the sake of our marriage and for our children.

It’s what God calls us to do, and our obedience is worship.

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There’s a big announcement over on the Influence blog today about the Influence Conference 2013!