What makes marriage work?

I didn't do much dating growing up.

Oh, I'll be honest - I didn't do any dating growing up, and the whole world of romance and kissing and flowers and fights and making up was to me a mystery from a fairy tale. I found myself fascinated with how a romantic relationship - and how a marriage - worked.

A complete nerd and a hungry reader for any sort of print I could get my hands on, I'd peruse articles on how to better your marriage and the like when I came across them. It puzzled me to read over and again that tragedies are often very hard for a marriage to weather: things like the death of a child or a severe medical trial. Surely these things would bring people closer together, I thought. You go through something hard, cling to each other for support, and emerge all the stronger on the other side, right?

I think I know a little better now.

An insightful (married) friend was telling me recently about her advice to couples considering getting engaged: marriage does not fix anything about your relationship. Marriage makes your relationship more of what it is.

I think trials in life make your marriage more of what it already is. If there are flaws that spring up now and again when things are going good, they can deepen into dividing trenches when things are bad. If a marriage is strong, founded by two people loving the Truth more than themselves, trials will drive them harder and deeper to the Truth, which of course has incidental results of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness and a host of other fruits that make a relationship sweet no matter the circumstances.

What kind of person - what kind of partner - am I being in this trial? Am I all the more seeking the Truth who became man, following him with unselfishness and kindness in my wake? Or do I think that I deserve certain attention, certain things I want to buy, certain services I want performed because I have cancer, and this is a way to get my way that I wanted anyway.

I know the answer. And yet it's so hard to change. I have no idea how to let go of the anger and entitlement I feel when I don't get what I want. I know the power of Christ's spirit is supposed to come in there somewhere, but I'm really stubborn. It's my own heart that needs a healer's work as well as the tumors in chest.