Few things are as undersold as monogamy.

In May, I’ll complete my 29th year of marriage, but Thursday I completed my 51st year of monogamy. I am a sexual minority: a lifelong monogamist.

God helped me along the way by making me a nerd. Had I been smooth or had God created me as eye candy, who knows what would’ve happened. But as my adolescence was, I had plenty of time when I couldn’t to consider why I wouldn’t.

Monogamy is not primarily a gift I give to my spouse. If it were, then when the biscuits were burned or she didn’t think my jokes were funny or the marriage were sexless or she had dementia or she got old, I would be more tempted to think she no longer deserved it.

Monogamy is an act of obedience to the Designer of humanity and human sexuality, and as such, it is a gift to myself from God. I never got myself a tryst that provided hot sex; I got a companionship that built a warm home.

That home has become a place of solace from a savage world, a place of reinforcement for our common mission. It has provided an indestructible, unyielding base upon which our children can depend. It’s strength strengthens our church and our community.

If I am ever tempted to stray, I think forward to that day, lying on my bed, surrounded by wife and descendants, when, contrasting my many failures, I will be able to know that this one vow was a way in which I never betrayed my wife and children.

I don’t want to give that up. And with that remembrance, resolve grows and the Tempter flees.

Monogamy is a good gift from God. Embrace it and live.