"Adam and Eve must have had fun working together in the garden. No commutes, no child care, no financial worries. Just the opportunity to be with each other all day and feel the satisfaction of doing something together that neither could do alone.

We hunger for this today: cooperating together, meshing, working like a mountain climbing team, ascending the peak of our dream, and then holding each other at the end of the day. God has planted this hunger deep within every married couple. It's more than a hunger to create new life. It's a third hunger, a hunger to do something significant together. According to God's Word, we were joined to make a difference. We were married for a mission.

Marriage expert Dennis Rainey says, 'One of the missing ingredients of couples today is they do not have a mission; they do not have a sense of God having called them together to do something as a couple.' But often, as we begin to feel this basic longing, we don't know what it is. We get the 'seven-year itch' or the '12-year anger' or the '18-year blahs.' We think, WHAT'S WRONG WITH US? OUR COMPANIONSHIP MAY NOT BE PERFECT, BUT WE HAVE EACH OTHER. AND, many can add, WE HAVE OUR CHILDREN. SO WHAT ARE WE MISSING?

We may be missing one-third of what God created marriage for—serving Him together. Counselor James H. Olthuis writes, 'To try to keep love just for us . . . is to kill it slowly . . . . We are not made just for each other; we are called to a ministry of love to everyone we meet and in all we do. In marriage, too, Jesus' words hold true; in saving our lives we lose them, and in losing our lives in love to others, we drink of life more deeply.' "