Love is an accomplishment. 


Recently I read an article on the Huffington Post detailing how love, and marriage specifically, isn't an accomplishment. The author's argument is summed in this paragraph from her article:

"In my opinion, getting married should never be put in a higher regard than the academic and professional successes that women work hard to attain. You don't have to have a brain, drive or special skill set to get married. You just have to have a willing partner. However, getting into X school, graduating with Y degree, and landing Z job does require actual hard work."

Reading this article made me a little sad, because I couldn't disagree more. 

I am so proud of getting my Bachelor's Degree in just three years, graduating Magna Cum Laude, landing a job that I love and excelling at it, doing freelance work on the side, and more. These are accomplishments that I am proud of, and worked very hard for.

But if I'm going to be 100% honest, my love and my marriage with Randy mean just as much, if not more to me than them all combined.

Unfortunately, the importance of marriage and love has been diminished in the world today. I fully understand that not everyone will marry in this life, that others will go through painful marriages or lose their loved ones too soon. My thoughts on this in no way diminishes their situation and their accomplishments. My point is this. That in the world today we are placing less value on marriages and families, and couldn't that in some way be contributing to more and more of them falling apart? If marriage and love and creating a family isn't an accomplishment, then why would anybody do it?

Marriages and families are the cornerstone of our society. Without them, there isn't a structure. There isn't stability, a place to begin teaching children, a place of nurture and love. The love of a family that leads to the stability of society, starts with the love of a couple, their engagement, and their marriage. 

Marriage is incredibly hard work, and so is the decision to marry when it's taken seriously. Which it should be every time. It DOES take work to be in a relationship. To get to know someone. To love them, and to let them love you. It takes so much hard work to get on the same page enough to where you decide to commit to each other for life, and beyond. 

I think that if more people think of engagement, marriages, and love as an accomplishment, there might be more people fighting to stay together, or fighting to start a life together instead of waiting for it to be easy. 

I think we should be placing more emphasis on education, career changes, etc. We should be valuing those accomplishments. But that doesn't mean we should value the accomplishment of falling in love and choosing to spend every day working for a marriage, any less.

On top of the worldly reasons that marriages and families and love should be valued, I have an additional reason. We don't take our degree to Heaven. We don't take the money that our big career promotion earned us to Heaven. We take our family. So the person that you marry, is the most important person in the world. It's the most important decision and accomplishment you will make. It will set the course for your career and how you choose to proceed, your family and how they are raised, where you live, what you learn, and how you grow. 

Love, engagements, and marriages are accomplishments. Huge ones. And I am so proud of the work and effort I put into my marriage every day.