Contributed by Adeliyn • May 23, 2023

I had always been led to believe that my parents had a good marriage – my father had repeated it so many times it seemed like Gospel truth. Now that I am married and have children of my own, the rose coloured glasses fell off, compelling me to comprehend that reality may not be what it seemed.

Perhaps it was true: for him, that is. But reflecting on reality, what I now remember is  a person we saw during some weekends, a man who likes to think he knows his children but in reality can barely communicate with the children without his wife in between. Ironically, it was with this man my mother had to use her children to communicate her needs during her last days.

Coming from a communicatively dysfunctional family, I understand its negative impact and wish to bring as little of it into my family unit. My husband too has his own family baggage that he does not want to bring into our shared family unit. I’m very thankful that we had our preliminary “business talk” discussing mainly four subjects, namely our values, navigating future in-law relationships, finances, and time commitments outside of us as a couple. Having that talk helped us understand each other’s priorities and be better communicators during our courtship and subsequently in our marriage. It is encouraging that we had covered most of the topics when we did our Pre-Marriage Course, even surprising our counsellors as they have never met couples who had about 90% similar responses to each other in a blind survey.

It seems that what we have been doing is rubbing off over children as well. My children may still cling to me as the primary parent, however they don’t act as though I am the only parent and will want to interact with their father and each other. One might think “well they are still young, wait till they grow up” however it brings us more hope that we are doing better than our own parents ever did.

Growing up with Christian parents, and being a parent now, made it clearer than ever that we are still very much fallible as we are still in the flesh. Now that we have resources like the Marriage Course, Parenting Children and Teens, these can better facilitate growing intentionally towards Christ individually and together as a couple and a family. It is my hope that not just my family utilise these resources to help us grow a family, but other families as well as we work towards becoming marriage partners, and subsequently build better families than the ones we come from.