Making A Choice

Making a Choice

If the godly give in to the wicked, it’s like polluting a fountain or muddying a spring.

Proverbs 25:26

Listen to these words: “We stand at the crossroads, each minute, each hour, each day, making choices. We choose the thoughts we allow ourselves to think, the passions we allow ourselves to feel, and the actions we allow ourselves to perform. Each choice is made in the context of whatever value system we’ve selected to govern our lives. In selecting that value system, we are, in a very real way, making the most important choice we will ever make.”^a Benjamin Franklin said this, and his words have more wisdom for married couples than he probably ever knew.

We have a friend who says the quality of a couple’s marriage can basically be measured by the quality of their choices together. We tend to agree. Good choices keep a couple moving in the right direction. Bad choices steer them toward the rocks. And every day in every marriage, choices are made that lead couples to better places, and choices are made that serve as a detour.

It is difficult to exaggerate the power of our choices. Even the small choices we make determine how the future will treat us. We often use the legendary story of a man in the railroad station in St. Louis to illustrate the point. He accidentally moved a small piece of railroad track just three inches. As a result, the train that was supposed to arrive in Newark, New Jersey, ended up in a station in New Orleans, Louisiana, some thirteen hundred miles away from its intended destination. Apocryphal or not, the illustration makes it clear: we choose our destiny. And the small choices matter.

That’s why unhealthy choices are one of the leading causes of difficulty in marriage. Here are a few examples of bad choices good couples make:

A wife who chooses to keep information from her husband about the money she spent with a girlfriend on a recent shopping spree.

A husband who knows his work schedule is interfering with his marriage, yet chooses to work at the same pace because his job “demands it.”

A wife who chooses to use sex with her husband as a reward system rather than an expression of passion.

A husband who chooses to keep his wife in the dark about the debt that is accruing on their credit cards.

Regardless of how insignificant a choice may seem at the moment, it is bound to direct our steps toward something that either enriches or diminishes our relationships. Marriage is filled with hundreds of crossroads each week, and when we choose the road less traveled, we are choosing to build a stronger marriage.^b

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.

—Robert Frost

^a 177

^b 178