Marriage: It's Not about You.

My wife and I met when we were 12.  We started dating in High School.  We have now been together (off and on) for over 20 years and married for almost 18.  When I tell people that we were High School sweethearts, I get the appropriate and coveted "oohs and ahhs".  We were just meant to be, seems to be the sentiment.  Well, what makes the story "ooh" worthy is the fact that we are still together.  If we hadn't made it, then "Meant to be" becomes "Better luck next time."  There are millions of high school sweet hearts that never made it.  There is a lot of Fate and Destiny and Romantical BS that is heaped on any relationship, and especially HS sweethearts.  If a couple is going to rely on that other person being "The One" and just letting "Fate" do all the work, well then, these relationships will go the way of mullets and mix tapes: doomed or forgotten.

Romanticism does point to something, though.  I do believe that my wife is meant for me and that she was given to me by the hand and grace of God.  After many years of heart ache sustained by great Joy within our marriage, we finally began to realize that our hope for salvation in each other was causing great damage.  In a sense, our romantic desire to be saved was noble, but it was severely misdirected.  My adventurous confidence could not save her.  Her inherent goodness could not save me.  Fate is random and unruly.  God is not.  When we surrendered to God, the details of our role within his will became a lot more clear.

Here is what I've come to understand about marriage so far:

• "I can't live without you!" is enough reason to get married, but not enough to stay married.
• It's bigger than two people.  It's bigger than the kids too.  People depend on marriages.  I've depended on the lasting unions of others.  Marriage is important to community and society.  It's not for every one, but everyone benefits from stable marriages.
• "You complete me." Is a great movie line, but a dumb/impossible thing to live up to.  I'm not even complete myself, how can I complete someone else?  It's less about two halves making a whole.  It's more about two messy people making a bigger mess together and finding great love and beauty in what God does with that. 
• I learned how to love God by learning to love my Wife.  I'm better at loving my Wife because I learned about God's love.
• Fate says, "I have provided this person to meet all your needs, together you can do it."
• God says, "I have brought you together to do the work of the kingdom, you cannot do anything without me!"
• A marriage vow is a promise you make with a future version of yourself.  A vow is to be relied on when our wills fail.  A vow based on our own wills is double doomed.  A vow made to God has the benefit of his power and his will.  "For Better or Worse." is such an invisible cliche at this point that young engaged folk can't seem to process it.  But there is a reason those words are in every exchanged vows since ever.  Heading into a marriage, you cannot possibly imagine how hard it's going to be.  Also, you are not even equipped to receive the Joy that lies within the depths of marriage.  Therefore, you must rely on this Vow to get to a place where your heart can actually live up to it.  And truly, the only way to do this is not by your own sheer will, but it is in trusting God, the creator of marriage.  When things are hard in the temporal, we need something eternal to cling to.
• My wife was able to submit to me, when I became a proper servant to her.
• "How do I know if I'm married to the right person?"  Check the name on the certificate.
• The closer to a good husband I become, the clearer it is to my wife, that I am not nearly enough.  Early in our marriage, she depended so much on things I was not delivering and that led to such heart ache.  Now, by the Grace of God and the Power of Christ's Love, I am actually delivering on those needs and yet the more we grow, the more it is revealed just how much we depend on him.  We are closer and far more committed and inextricably intertwined and yet are somehow less dependant on each other.  
• "I trust the Jesus in you." is the most powerful thing my wife has ever told me.  It changed my life.  Fundamentally, I knew that I was not trustworthy (I had felt low worth my whole life), but having the ability to claim him and have my wife trust that identity was amazing and freeing.  And it was more real for both of us.
• We are not meant to rescue each other, our God is a God of rescue.  We are built to serve.  If we leave the rescuing to him, we will be better able to serve.  
• A good marriage isn't 50/50.  Some times it's 90/10 for long stretches.  The scorecard will never come out even, so don't keep score.  Better yet, use God's scorecard:  He did it all, so rest in that.  If you are constantly trying to even out the score, you will miss out on the beauty of giving your all to someone.  
• Marriage is God's gift to the world: it serves, it inspires, it nurtures, it protects and it cares for it's community.  It provides nobility and security and new citizens(children) to the kingdom.
• There is a reason that Christ and the Church are expressed as Bride and Groom...redemption and restoration are found there.
• No marriage is without failure.  The reason a marriage makes it or doesn't make it has little to do with the amount of brokenness or failure within.  It has everything to do with the amount of access the participants have to Christ's forgiveness.

In his book, Jesus Among Other Gods, Ravi Zacharias describes an airport scene in which Dr. J. Robertson McQuilkin is caring for his wife who is suffering from Alzheimers.  A young woman watches nearby as McQuilkin, who surrendered the Presidency of Columbia Bible College to serve his wife, patiently answers his wife's questions, the same ones over and over.  He takes her on walks while she searches for who knows what.  After observing this scene for some time, the young woman finally asks no one in particular, "Will I ever find a man to love me like that?"  

There is a deep ache in this question.  And there is truth.  There is beauty in a romantic story of two people risking their lives for each other in some epic drama.  But there is more beauty and more devotion in the story of a husband caring for his spouse, in this manner for years and years and years.  That's not a 50/50 scenario, but the truth is that that husband is closer to the proper version of himself, God's version of himself, in caring for his wife than he would ever be serving as president of a college.  He committed to the Vow he made to his wife and God, maybe when he didn't even want to.  And this young woman observes correctly the depth of what true love is.  

The really miraculous part of the Marriage that God has given me is that he has worked backwards in time and taken the really rough parts and made them sweeter.  He has revealed himself in all the joyful times, times we thought we were living on our own, but in fact were deeply woven into his will.  He brought us together.  We tore ourselves apart.  He took us separately and made us whole again.  We came together again, not facing each other, but kneeling to him.  This is the true power of marriage, that my wife and I now face the world side by side, unbreakable because we are bound by God's promises.  Oh the Joy!  

Almost Finally, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, expresses what marriage is more succinctly and beautifully than I ever could (but if I had put this first, you wouldn't have read this far.)

God is guiding your marriage. Marriage is more than your love for each other. It has a higher dignity and power, for it is God’s holy ordinance, through which He wills to perpetuate the human race till the end of time. In your love you see only your two selves in the world, but in marriage you are a link in the chain of the generations, which God causes to come and to pass away to His glory, and calls into His kingdom. In your love you see only the heaven of your own happiness, but in marriage you are placed at a post of responsibility towards the world and mankind. Your love is your own private possession, but marriage is more that something personal – it is a status, an office. Just as it is the crown, and not merely the will to rule, that makes the king, so it is marriage, and not merely your love for each other, that joins you together in the sight of God and man. As you first gave the ring to one another and have now received it a second time from the hand of the pastor, so love comes from you, but marriage from above, from God. As high as God is above man, so high are the sanctity the rights, and the promise of marriage above the sanctity, the rights, and the promise of love. It is not your love that sustains the marriage, but from now on, the marriage that sustains your love. God makes your marriage indissoluble. ‘What therefore God has joined together, let no man put asunder’ (Matthew 19:6). God joins you together in marriage; it is His act, not yours. Do not confound your love for one another with God. God makes your marriage indissoluble, and protects it from every danger that may threaten it from within and without; He wills to be the guarantor of its indissolubility. It is a blessed thing to know that no power on earth, no temptation, no human frailty can dissolve what God holds together; indeed, anyone who knows that may say confidently: What God has joined together, can no man put asunder. Free from all anxiety that is always a characteristic of love, you can now say to each other with complete and confident assurance: We can never lose each other now; by the will of God we belong to each other till death.

And finally, God gets the last word.  We will be saved, not because we are great, but because he is:

Isaiah 43 Israel, the Lord who created you says,

    “Do not be afraid—I will save you.
    I have called you by name—you are mine.
2 When you pass through deep waters, I will be with you;
    your troubles will not overwhelm you.
When you pass through fire, you will not be burned;
    the hard trials that come will not hurt you.

4 I will give up whole nations to save your life,
    because you are precious to me
    and because I love you and give you honor.
5 Do not be afraid—I am with you!