My Many Marriages

Paul Zahl, in Grace in Practice, says that our marriages are begun with a spark of grace.

"Wow, that beautiful girl loves me."--Ellis

"He bought me a white linen Ralph Lauren dress.  He really cares about me."--Debbie

Then, Zahl points out that the law comes creeping in.  We all know that "law is death"--it almost killed our marriage.

For the first ten to twelve years of our marriage, I tried to establish marital and familial relations which were consistent with my upbringing and my personality.  Debbie did the same.  (Of course, we can also reject what our parents had, but then we still bring the law into our marriage trying to do the opposite of what our parents did.)  In other words, our view of what a marriage and family should be like became instruments of judgment over against our spouse.  This almost resulted in a divorce.

Then, as I've written before, I began attending PZ's Bible Study and began learning that God, rather than judging us, was graciously loving us.  This knowledge of God's demeanor towards me allowed me to begin displaying (in some part) this same demeanor towards Debbie.

Thankfully, Debbie found a wonderful Bible Study at Covenant Presbyterian.  Debbie wanted to fix our marriage and family.  Like me, instead of finding a Bible Study that focused on how to fix yourself and/or your family, she found one in which the grace of God towards His beloved children was taught.

Debbie and I learned to forgive each other.  We began to see each other, albeit only dimly, as God saw us.  This brought about a metamorphosis in our marriage.  Our first marriage died, and a second one was born.

During our second marriage, we had learned to forgive each other for our weaknesses.  Debbie forgave me for my temper, and I forgave her what I perceived to be stubbornness--but which was actually Debbie protecting her heart.

As the years have rolled by, God has brought further changes in our marriage.

First, we began to appreciate one another for our strengths--appreciation which we had when we married but which had been subjugated by recrimination over the years for all the things we do wrong.  Debbie's empathetic nature gave her the ability to minister to my mother--who can be off-putting.  Debbie's tireless care towards my mother changed my mother and dramatically improved my relationship with my mother.

Second, we began to understand that you don't get certain strengths without the concomitant weakness.  Since Debbie was so empathetic, she was disorganized.  Her focus was on people, so she was not good at setting and accomplishing tasks.  On the other hand, I am task-oriented, which means that tasks come before people.  We realized that her strengths offset my weaknesses and vice-a-versa. We realized that the marriage is to be a partnership--a symbiotic relationship--that, as written in Genesis, we were to be One.

Third, when reading Zahl again recently, I realized that the "leave and cleave" language in Genesis refers not just to putting our new family first (in some sense) but that it also means that one's marriage should be, and has to be, different from the one that my parents had and from the one that Debbie's parents had.  Our marriage is to be a new entity--formed by the meshing of my strengths and weaknesses with Debbie's strengths and weaknesses.  In other words, we are not to "do" our marriage like our parents "did" theirs--no matter how good our parents' marriages were.

Where will our marriage be in another five years--if God lets me live that long, I can't wait to see.