What Makes a Marriage Work?

This past week, Deb and I celebrated our 27th wedding anniversary.  Seems like just yesterday we were married.  This is what we looked like then.

Ahh, so happy, so in love!  Except that is not the truth.  Our first ten years or so of marriage were brutal.  We are pre-marital mentors at our church Christ Community Chapel and the first thing we tell our candidate couples is that the euphoria of marriage wears off very quickly.  I remember on our honeymoon thinking I married the wrong person.  

A turning point occurred around year 10 when we both attended a conference entitled “Management and Marriage” sponsored by Fellowship of Companies for Christ and it caused both of us to look inwardly and instead of trying to change the other person, we asked God to change us.  And God indeed changed us.  And in the process of changing us, He fitted us together more and more as a couple.  The process caused us to appreciate more and more what each other had as strengths rather than perceived weaknesses.  When we honor God’s covenant of marriage and commit to holy living, He changes us.  So a successful marriage is supernatural.  That is what we tell our couples.

So what makes a marriage work?  Here are some tips from the Dan and Debbie school of hard knocks.

1. A commitment to the covenant of marriage.  You pledged “till death do us part” in front of witnesses and God.
2. Pray that you will be conformed to who God wants you to be for your spouse and don’t try to change your spouse.
3. Don’t expect your spouse to change, but don’t be surprised if they do (see #2).
4. Communicate even when it hurts. 
5. Don’t use rule #4 as an excuse to hurt your spouse – see rule #6.
6. Pick your battles – Lord knows my wife has.
7. Be upfront on practical issues, especially money.
8. Never put your spouse down in front of others including your children.  Watch “prayer requests” about your spouse with others.
9. Praise your spouse often, especially in front of others.  Works great with guys especially coming from their wife.
10. Do stuff together – Deb has acquired a taste for baseball as an example and I just enjoy going on trips with her.
11. Eat meals together – we ate many meals together as a family and it was foundational. 
12. Laugh a lot – we do.  Someone has said a marriage makes life twice as much fun and lessens half the stress.  No doubt about it.
13. Be committed to God’s word in your family. 
14. Be committed to personal holiness.  The difference in my life especially in the past few years is that commitment. 
15. Place your spouse above all else behind your Lord and Saviour.

My wife is more lovely to me by far today than when we got married.  She is my best friend on this earth.  God has woven us together over the past 27 years and I am blessed for it.  Here is what we look like now. 

This picture is taken on one of our many adventures to the Taj Mahal (we never actually went in but that is another story).  While the body sags and hair turns gray, the marriage journey becomes even more special and even more rewarding.  There is a reason it is the picture that Christ uses with his church.  I pray that you will find the same joy in your marriage.  God can heal any marriage just as He did ours.

Mom's Day 2012

Today is Mother's Day. I am reminded that I am blessed to have three great mothers and each in their own way is special to me. My birth mom currently lives in Peru. My relationship with my mom has sometimes been rocky as many men have with their moms. But my mom has been very supportive of me, especially as I have gotten older. She is a very gregarious individual who loves to be with people. She has been a very successful businesswoman. In her retirement years, she is very comfortable living in a foreign country, playing bridge with ambassador's wives, and learnign a new culture. With my mom, you know exactly what you get - she is very forthright individual which I have grown to appreciate. She is no nonsense and she let's you know where she is coming from even if you don't agree with it.

My mother-in-law lives in Wheaton, IL and i have known her for 28 years. She has a real gift of hospitality and service. There are so many times I remember people in her home and she always made her home a warm, inviting place. She welcomed me into their home as a new believer in Christ and encouraged me in my young faith. I know people who have a poor relationship with their in-laws, but I love my in-laws and am so thankful for them. They have been very encouraging of our marriage also and what marriage needs to have stress.

Finally, there is my stepmother Linda who lives with my Dad in Tucson, AZ. My Dad and Linda have been married somewhere around 21 years and she treats us just like the family. I love her low key, and dry sense of humor. You have to be a special woman to put up with my Dad.

It has been great to see my kids all call their mother today. That I think is the most rewarding part is see my wife receive the recognition from her kids that she deserves because she is a great mom. She is not my mom, but my partner in raising three great kids so I have had a front row seat on how she has interacted with our kids. There have been times where she has had to take the lion's share of the parenting because I have been working too much, traveling, or just plain neglectful. But she has done so with a wonderful, supportive heart.

So Happy Mothers Day!

Anger is but a Moment Away

Our dog, Maxwell is the nicest, most social animal on the face of the earth.  He is a big dog and from outside appearances could be viewed as threatening.  But this dog wouldn’t harm a fly.  Even in situations where he is being threatened by another dog, he is very calm, very social.  But Max is 11 years old and twice in the past month or so, I have seen evidence that Max is not quite the same Max.

Over Easter we were over at my in-laws and we had family over.  We had just finished our meal on Good Friday and during the meal Max was relegated to the basement.  This was just cause of the nuisance factor.  But we were done now so we invited Max up not thinking anything of it.  Max was grazing under the table looking for any scraps which we don’t like but it is what dogs do.  The youngest boy of my wife’s cousin was calmly petting the dog.  AND THEN IT HAPPENED!  In a fraction of a moment, the dog turned and bit the little boy.  Never, ever seen it happen.  And this was not just a little attention getter – he broke skin.

Then a few weeks ago, I caught Max in the middle of licking our nice wood floor which drives Deb and I nuts.  He retreats to his cage when caught in something like this but I wouldn’t let him get away in his retreat.  I grabbed him with the intention of showing him his sin of licking our floor.  While I was grabbing him, he yelped and nipped at me.  So twice in one month what had never happened before.  Could Max be turning the page to cranky old doggyness?  Something to keep in mind when we have people over. 

I am reminded that anger is a bitter brew that is just waiting to come out.  For some of us, it is right at the surface.  For others of us it is deep down and when it blows, it really blows.  I tend to fall into the latter category, but I really have a major league temper when it blows.  James 3 talks about how much damage a tongue can wreck.  It can set a forest in fire, it can defile a body.  It is full of poison, it is untamable.  Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount talks about the anger of man being an insidious, internal sin that can just pop out at a moment.  How many of us can just blow up and we wonder where that venomous wrath comes from.  I can remember something just setting me off with my children.  It was not them – it was me.  Usually it was a result of frustration, the frustration of a sinful heart.  Not all anger is sin mind you but most is.  Anger against sin is natural, but that is probably a small fraction of the sin that comes out of us.  Most of our anger comes from our self-centeredness. 

What can tame the tongue?  James 3 goes on to say that there is a gentleness in wisdom that comes from above.  In other words, bitterness and rage is natural, gentleness is supernatural.  We need God to change us from the inside out..  We need the presence of the Holy Spirit molding us, changing us, transforming us into His image.  We need Romans 12:2 transformation. 

Do not be conformed to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

Imagine a Life Without Touch

I am not one of these guys that is especially huggy.  I know a few of those guys who are the huggy kind – they hug everybody and anybody.  That seems especially true of the NFL commissioner Roger Goodell.  Did you notice that he hugged every single draft pick (at least as long as I watched)?  I heard Greg Brinda on WKNR comment that he set a record hug of nearly 11 seconds.  Is that wrong for a guy?  Was he whispering sweet nothings into the guys ear? 

One thing that causes people to not hug or touch is the fear of infectious diseases.  I made the mistake of watching the movie Contagion.  Talk about a freaky kind of a movie.  Made you definitely think twice about making any physical contact with anybody.  Here is the trailer.

Contagion Trailer

Despite the movie, I can’t imagine life without some form of physical contact.  God did not wire us that way.  We were wired for relationship and relationship involves touch.  In looking in my bible concordance I was struck by the various uses of hands:

• Laying on of hands is a symbol of identification
• Touch not the unclean thing as a warning to stay away from that which corrupts
• Cleansing our hands as a symbol of purity
• Lifting of of holy hands in worship
• Touching Jesus to be healed
• Jesus healing with a touch

My favorite illustration of touch is in the story of the prodigal son.  On the son’s return, the father sees his son from a distance and runs to him and embraces him (Luke 15:20).  That word conveys the idea of gripping strongly without letting go.  It is sometimes used to mean “fall upon” with difficulty to separate.  We have all felt a warm embrace that is not surface level.  My friend Vince embraces like that – it conveys an unmistakable love.  It is the same word used of the Ephesian elders in Acts 20:37 who embraced Paul when they thought they would never see him again. 

The absence of touch would much more affect us than the presence of some sickness.  We as human beings must have that physical touch.  We hear sad stories of Romanian orphans who are so numerous that they never feel the presence of physical touch and are literally starving for it.  We are wired for it.  It is part of our human expression. 

The Approachable God

As I think about the impact of Easter, it is all about the God of the universe becoming more vulnerable. The God of the universe displaying His heart. How was God able to perfectly come to man in love.

I try to read through the Bible systematically each year and it sometimes is a struggle to get through some of the tedious passages such as in Leviticus and Numbers. God puts them in there for lots of reasons, but nowhere more than to demonstrate the contrast of the unapproachable God against the approachable God. The Israelite could not take the name of God upon his lips. We have trouble visualizing what that means because we approach God so flippantly. The tabernacle was not that way. Just consider just the ark of the covenant.

The ark was made of wood representing man. It is surrounded by gold representing kingship and deity. Gold and wood are together, but never mixed. In between is the mercy-seat. Christ is the perfect intermediary. It cannot be a mercy seat without the priest shedding blood over it. That is what makes it a mercy seat. Everything revolves around the mercy seat, which is made of infallible pure gold. The perfect Christ has blood shed over it so that we can approach God on the basis of the mercy seat. There are two cherubim that cannot look up, but must look towards the mercy seat.

There are objects contained inside the mercy seat. Don't miss this symbolism. If the mercy seat truly is everything, then the objects have to be contained inside it. In the ark is the manna which demonstrates the sustenance of life. Christ is the bread of life. Also in the ark is Aaron's rod that budded. This speaks of resurrection. Before God's involvement, it was a dead stick. Only by God's direct involvement did it bud. You were a dead stick but when you came to mercy by Christ's resurrection, you were budded. You could not bud on your own - you had to have God's direct intermediation to be budded. We are raised with Christ on the basis of His mercy and God's direct involvement. Finally there was the book of the law, the commandments which are inside. The commandments can only be a basis of mercy if they are covered by mercy. If the commandments were outside the ark, you would not be judged on the basis of mercy.

I pray you will see that you can only come to God through the mercy seat. In this Easter season, take the path to mercy.

DebSue is 52

Yes, hard to believe but my wonderful wife turned 52 years old this past week.  Since we have been married nearly 27 years, she has been married to me more than half of her (and mine) life.  Poor girl!  She has aged quite gracefully and writes her own blog, which is very well followed.  You can find it here.  She also writes a daily haiku called "Elixir of Life" which is a daily quip about coffee.  She can follow her on Twitter.  Deb is a professional photographer and quite a good one if I do say so myself.  Her gift is the ability to find things that many of us can't find, especially tunnel vision males like her husband.  She does not enjoy portraits or posing type pictures.  She can find the shots that would not be obvious to other people.  Enough of the shameless promotion.

I think Internet dating services like eharmony.com and match.com are ok.  I know people who use them and are satisfied with the results.  However, I am concerned that for the Christian they may be steering us down the wrong path.  Because these services focus on the person more like us or more like we envision we want our partner to be.  This is risky.  I know for a fact I would not have picked out Deb based on our similarities.  We have more differences than similarities from this perspective.  However, if each of us is the same, probably one of us is unnecessary.  I would not be nearly the person I am were it not for the appreciation of things I gained from my wife. She has insight, interests, and abilities that I could never have. For example, her love of history, art, and some could argue useless facts.  She is amazing on Jeopardy and I have encouraged her to try and enter. As a team on Jeopardy, we could do well because I would get sports and business and she would get everything else.  Like the guy who said he teamed with Michael Jordon to score 40 points in the game (Jordan scored 36).  She is incredibly free-form, creative, and even goofy which balances my linear, tunnel vision approach.  Two of our daughters have this creative ability and one is more like me in her no-nonsense approach.


Now if she was like me, God would not have enabled me to grow like I have.  I have a much deeper appreciation for the things she brings to the table.  That is truly a God thing.  One plus one equals three.  We do marital mentoring for young couples and we encourage them to look beyond and appreciate the things their mate is and does.  We made the mistake early in our marriage of trying to change the other person to be like the other.  It does not work.  Instead after much torture, we both prayed that God would change us to be transformed so that our marriage would honor Him.  And it did.  And God threw the enjoyment in for good measure.  While we loved having children, we are now in the early phases of being empty-nesters and so far it has been a blast.  I am a better person because of Deb and hopefully she would say the same.  And the best is yet to come!