Excert from, Marriage What’s the Point? One Couple Finds Meaning in a Crazy Mess  by Jesse and Kara Birkey available at www.reflectministry.com and amazon. …Where are we supposed to get our validation from? Who is supposed to be the one giving us our sense of self-worth? Where does our love come from? Who is the one who is supposed to make us feel good about ourselves? Ultimately all of those things are supposed to come from God. He is our source of love. God is the one who tells us who we are. God provides our sense of self-worth. Basically, everything that we tend to look for our spouse or significant other to provide we are supposed to be getting from God. Does that mean as a husband or wife we don’t have to tell our spouses that we love them? Does it mean that we should not show them how much we love and care about them? Absolutely not! However, what it does mean is that we should not allow those compliments and acts of love to become the foundation of our identity. It had been a couple of weeks since that awful Wednesday night and I was replaying a question that I had been asking myself and sort of asking God: “If we are supposed to be getting everything that we need from God as far as love, self-worth, and validation, then why did He create marriage at all?” If a healthy and healed person gets all of that stuff from God, then why should he/she have to subject himself/herself to marriage where there is pain and suffering? What is the point? As I began to ask God that question, I began to yell at Him a little. It was at that point that He interrupted my spewing, as He often does, and gave me the answer: There are many benefits of marriage. God is able to use it in many ways that are beneficial to His kingdom and to us. But in that moment God pressed one reason on my heart in particular. God showed me that His intention and desire for marriage was to be a covenant relationship in which we could experience the intimate character and love of His heart. His intention is for us to be able to experience Him as we reflect who He is to each other. He wants to use the most intimate human relationship we can have to show us who He is….