Over the past week or so I've had at least a half-dozen conversations regarding marriage--why it's so hard and what might be done about it.
We all get married because we think that the person we're marrying is compatible with us, because we love them (or at least we think that we love them) and because the person generally makes us happy--it seems like it's a good match.
But then something remarkable happens a year or two or three into the marriage: the person who seemed like such a perfect match back then is suddenly plucking your last nerve. They have issues. And maybe you do, but theirs are (of course) much, much worse.
And before you know it, the person you were dying to spend the rest of your life with just a couple of years earlier is now a distant stranger who makes you crazy.
One thing that my wife and I have noted in ourselves and in many of our friends and "counseling" situations that we've faced is the principle of "baggage fit." That is, God seems to put together couples who's "baggage" (be that family history, personal insecurities, poor relational habits, or other stuff) hits at exactly the wrong (or right) place.
For example, the person who runs from conflict finds herself somehow married to a man who's willing and eager (perhaps over-eager) to engage in conflict. The man who comes from a work-aholic family finds himself married to a woman who is unafraid to make her emotional needs known and refuses to roll over to his over-commitments at work.
Gary Thomas writes in his book "Sacred Marriage" that no one gets married thinking that they're doing it for the purposes of sanctification--that is, no one thinks that primary purpose of marriage is to make us more holy, to transform us.
But that's exactly what God is up to with all of this. The intimacy of marriage un-earths all our junk. We want to blame it on the other person, and they're certainly a sinner just like us. But that's not the primary issue. The primary issue is us.
We have three options: 1. we can run away (ultimately leading to divorce), 2. we can pretend there's nothing wrong and/or shut down emotionally because it's too hard but stay in the marriage itself (the emotionally vacant marriage) or 3. we can lean into the hard stuff, turn towards the other person and not away, and dig into our fears and sin and brokenness and fight and seek and ask the Lord to heal us.
That last option is, of course the hardest one. But for most of us that's the path that God's called us to. In fact, that's the reason why he had us get married to the person in the first place.
Thomas writes that for those of us who are Christ-followers, the least helpful question is the question "have I made a mistake in marrying this person?" In all but the most extreme (i.e. abusive) situations, that question leads into infinite pointless speculation rather than helping us to deal with the real issues.
Marriage is hard. I'm never shocked when I hear divorce statistics. In fact, I'm regularly surprised by how many stick with it--particularly without some sort of prior God-commitment to the sanctity of the thing.
But if we let it, marriage can be the most significant crucible for our spiritual formation--and there's no doubt that it's painful at times. And in this, of course, we are following Christ. He invites us not to hop in his Hummer and go for a smooth ride over the rocky terrain of our lives. Rather, he calls us to take up our cross and follow him.
Death is the only way to life--this is the Easter story, it is to be our story as well.
And it seems to be the most important mark of any healthy marriage...at least the ones that I know of, anyway.
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