4. Their assessment tools can be found at symbisassessment.com.
5. Keller and Keller, The Meaning of Marriage.
A Woman’s Perspective: Anna’s Response to Chapter 1
Flip through the pages of a few bridal magazines, and you’ll get an idea of what many women imagine when they think of getting married: a perfect wedding and an equally perfect marriage after it. Too often, the wedding more than the marriage seems to be the goal.
But this isn’t new, and it didn’t start with advertisements in magazines. Growing up, I too dreamed of getting married, and of having the kind of marriage I saw in the TV shows I watched as a child. Like many other women, I naively thought that, once I said my vows, a picture-perfect married life—a husband and wife who love and respect each other, and who care deeply about their children—would be a given.
I quickly learned that little in marriage is a given. A strong, fulfilling marriage requires a full commitment from both spouses. People who approach marriage with the wedding as their primary goal soon discover how unprepared they are for the hard work of staying one.
Newlyweds may look at other couples and think, “We’ll never act like that!” Those who are newly married often underestimate what it takes to have a thriving marriage—both husband and wife finding a way to merge their lives, to get them to fit together. Merging two lives may sound like each spouse has to give up freedom, but it’s actually the opposite. It frees up both of them to have a joyful union, one that holds on to romance and excitement.
This book is intended to help you and your spouse avoid a make-believe marriage. Such marriages are all too common, and some are so outwardly convincing that few people around them have any idea how bad the relationship is until the couples separate. Sadly, we live in a society that rewards the illusion of perfection, whether in marriage or life in general. Just look at social media, which is full of people pretending to be as flawless as the pictures they post.
That human tendency was in us long before social media sites flooded the Internet. We don’t want to think of ourselves as failures. Nobody does. Nor do we want others to see us in an unfavorable light. So, we keep up a good front. We show only our happiest moments, not wanting to admit, sometimes even to ourselves, how unhappy we may be.
Clinton and I have witnessed both loving marriages and brutal divorces. What you will read in the following pages reflects not only our personal experience, but also what we’ve observed in other relationships. And none of them, even among the best, is perfect. There’s no such thing. Couples who have loving marriages work at it constantly. This book is your guide for how best to do that work.
Speaking of working at your marriage, let me take a moment to emphasize something in this chapter: Take the opportunities this book offers for practice and participation. By doing the exercises, you will further develop skills to strengthen and maintain your marriage. Engage with them. Don’t miss the chance to learn by thinking and doing.
What I most want is not for you to strive for a marriage without imperfections, but for you to have the strength, will, and perseverance to further cultivate the marriage that you and your spouse desire. And, that God wants for you. Throughout this book, we will share candidly about our marriage, in the hope that, either on your own or with your spouse, our experiences will inspire you to think deeply about your own marriage and how to make it even better.
As my husband indicates, marriage is a sacred covenant. The bond between husband and wife is the closest human relationship most people ever have. Clinton and I have lived the heartfelt advice in this book. I pray that it richly blesses you and your spouse.
Chapter 2. Marriage and the Gospel
Marriage allows us to live out the essence of the gospel, which is the particular way that God loves us. But we’re flawed, so loving our spouses in the same way proves forever challenging. In this chapter, I want to discuss some of the more important implications of the gospel for married people.
Our Flawed Condition
Everything you will read in this book is grounded in the following five affirmations:
1. You married someone who is flawed. In theological language, you married a sinner.
2. Because you too are flawed, so did your husband or wife. This is the human condition. Imperfect.
3. If you’ve been married and are now single, your spouse was most certainly a sinner, and he or she also married one—you.
4. None of us loves the Lord, our God, with all our heart, strength, mind, and soul.
5. Nor do any of us love our neighbor, including our spouse, as much as we love ourselves. This, too, is the human condition. Beset with egocentricity and self-centeredness.
Living Out the Gospel
What do Christians mean, exactly, when they refer to the gospel? There are many answers to this question, some of them excellent. These answers are not incompatible with one another and most provide helpful perspectives.
We might think of the gospel—Good News—as Jesus the Christ having reconciled us to the Father and so mended our relationship with him. Our debts have been paid and our guilt eradicated; we no longer have to exist split off from God. All of the petty thoughts we entertain in the privacy of our minds, and the less-than-gracious acts we occasionally engage in, are forgiven.
Or, we might conceive of the gospel as having released us from a kind of enslavement, from our inclination to exist egocentrically, according to what has been called the sin principle.6 I take this principle to mean instinctively inclined to ignore or rebel against the One True God. We are now free to live as God intended all along, united with him through his Spirit.
A third way to view the gospel is as having allowed us to triumph over death. We will live eternally in the presence of the Father, Son, and Spirit.
But, here’s still another way to think of the Good News: God loves you.7 The gospel is not just that God loves you, however, but that He loves you anyway.8 He loves you in spite of yourself. The idea behind a great marriage is to love your spouse anyway.
This implies that you will not exile your spouse, that he or she will not have to exist in a state of alienation from you, and that to the best of your ability you will accept the person you married as is. We come to each other just as we are. A friend is someone who believes in you, even when you don’t believe in yourself, and in marriage more than in any other relationship we are called to be our spouse’s closest friend.
Will you be able to do this consistently? Of course not! Remember. You’re flawed. You make mistakes and do uncharitable things. So do I and everyone else.
Marriage As Achievement
Regardless of how impressive an athlete’s abilities, without the drive to apply them diligently, there will be little or no peak performance. So it is with marriage. Genuine marriage entails abilities and motivations not everyone has. It reflects the gospel in at least three major ways:
First, it shows the willingness of a person to make a commitment to a life in common, with its implications for assets and liabilities. When you marry, you take on legal obligations. Anything you earn from then on, as long as you remain married, is in many states community property. The same applies to debts. Your spouse’s debts become your debts.
Second, there is public proclamation. Civil law requires that you proclaim this commitment before witnesses who become stand-ins for society at large. You must publicly declare your loyalty to the person you marry, and as with the willingness to commit, not everyone will sincerely do