Marriage...what a joke!

Recently on the Internet, I came across an ad for a new television series. It's called "The Marriage Ref". Maybe you've heard of it. I guess the basic idea of it is that there is a panel of celebrities who help give marriage advice to couples who are experiencing difficulties....hmmm... I can't be the only one to see how bad an idea this is.
I find it odd that you can't walk through a grocery story checkout line without being bombard with more details than you would ever want to know about so and so's latest break-up, and now we are SEEKING ADVICE FROM THESE PEOPLE? Has a marriage ever survived in Hollywood? What is entertaining about watching people struggle in a marriage relationship and then take horrible advice from people who obviously don't know how to keep a marriage together.
At the same time that I was seeing the advertisement for this show it seemed I kept being confronted by lines everywhere about "The Bachelor" and his big decision of which woman he was going to propose too. Cheesy pictures of some gap ad looking male standing in front of an airplane holding a dozen roses were just one more evidence to me that marriage is such a joke...on T.V. that is. What messages are these shows sending to us? To our children? That marriage is disposable, humorous, necessitates a referee (as if it's some sort of game in which husband and wife are pited against each other instead of being united on the same team)? Or on the opposite end of the spectrum is it telling us that marriage should be glamorous, expensive, showy, and beautiful all the time? That if it doesn't include a vocabulary of words such as Venice, Hot tubs, and 24-karat then it's not worth it? To me, both messages are dangerous and WRONG! Not to mention destructive and misleading.
In a recent article I just read the author Julie B. Beck mentions how more and more of our youth are expressing the fear in their abilities to succeed in marriage and form successful families. Beck stated,

"Our youth are increasingly less confident in the institution of families. They are less confident in their ability to form a successful eternal family. Because they are less confident in families, they’re placing more and more value on education and less and less importance on forming an eternal family. We know, from visiting with them and conducting studies, that they show a lack of faith in their ability to be successful in families. They don’t see forming families as a faith-based work. For them, it’s a selection process much like shopping. They don’t see it as something that the Lord will bless them and help them to accomplish."
(You can listen to the full article here or read it here)

I'm sorry to go off on a tirade about this but it makes me really angry. Such obvious anti-family, anti-marriage efforts are everywhere nowadays. But that's not what makes me so mad. What makes me mad is that WE BUY INTO IT in the name of entertainment. Just a thought, but could some of our popular media such as the shows mentioned above have any effect on our youth's "lack of confidance" in marriage and family? Who knows.

All I know is that marriage is neither a bloody game nor is it a glamorous ride to an exotic island on your own private jet. Marriage is messy. It can be tiring, frustrating, long, and always is guaranteed to include a far share of hard work! But it is also the most gloriously amazing high I personally have ever experienced in my life. Sure a trip to Italy, a bouquet of flowers, or a shiny new ring is nice...but it's not marriage. It's not real. Real is waking up at 3:00 in the morning, again, to a baby wanting to play instead of sleep because he has somehow regressed back to newborn stage confusing his days and nights. Your eyes are ready to pop out of your head and you haven't showered in three days but when you walk out into the living room you find a note left by your husband (who is going on less sleep than you are at the moment while trying desperately to graduate from grad school) telling you how much he loves and appreciates you. Two hours later you crawl back in bed after laying your baby down only to feel your husband snuggle up against your back and wrap his arms around you in a huge hug. That's real. That's love. That's marriage....
And we didn't even need a referee to tell us so...it just is.