We want to be one of those couples still goosing one another
in the kitchen at 65 making our grandkids cringe with disgust.
This is my customary answer when I talk with couples in
preparation for marriage. I ask them,
“What’s your preferred picture of the future?
What do you want your marriage to look like in thirty or forty
years?”
See I just showed my hand a little bit there. There’s a philosophy of life at work
there. I tend to believe that life is
more meaningful if there is a picture driving our actions. If there’s something out front of us,
something that captivates our imagination, something that screams, “Yes, when
we get there, this is what I want it to look like,” I believe our day to day
actions tend to hold together. Now,
before you go all sentimental on me, I have a pretty strong realist vein that
runs through my body. It’s the kind of
vein that says, “nothing is guaranteed.”
Right, I get that. Any number of
situations or issues could arise that makes that picture impossible. But without a picture, I often feel as though
I’m taking on life willy-nilly, with little glue that holds together my
actions, words, ambitions, and relationships.
So I choose a picture.
And in my picture I’m goosing my wife in the kitchen at
65. That’s my picture, what’s yours?
Now wait…
Before you answer that question, there is something you
ought to know. The moment you choose a
picture, you are responsible for the work
that makes that picture possible. That
means, daily, we choose actions, attitudes, and words that lend themselves to
the greatest possibility of making that picture possible. Listen, if I haven’t done the daily work of
caring for my wife, loving her, making time for her, flirting with her, then by
the time we get to 65 and I try to goose her, she’s liable to pop knots in my
head with a skillet.
We don’t just arrive at our picture. We lean in toward our picture by choosing to
act daily in ways that make that picture possible.
Now wait…
I need to back up for a moment.
We didn’t get married with a picture in mind. In fact, I’m not sure what we were thinking
when we got married. We were two young
(21 and 22) kids, infatuated with the idea of love, steeped in Hollywood
romanticism, about as far as we could be from God, and wrapped in a number of
dysfunctions and addictions. Put more
simply, we had relatives taking bets at our wedding about how many months it
would last. We got 6 months from one
(which we almost proved right). For the
first three years of marriage, we had no picture in mind, only survival. We were two deeply selfish, sinful, messy,
broken, people trying to navigate a path with multiple twists and turns, in the
dark. Talk about the blind leading the
blind.
In those first 3 years we nearly divorced six times.
In those first 3 years we did nearly everything a couple
could do to wound one another.
In those first 3 years two little boys were the only two
threads holding together an unraveling relationship.
But then…
Jesus.
Three years into our marriage, separated by a military
deployment, determined to divorce upon my return, Jesus happened. Thousands of miles away, a month apart from
one another, Jesus showed up in our lives and called us to be His
followers. Three years into our
marriage, Jesus dismantled our old selves, those old nasty, broken, selfish,
sinful selves and made us new creations.
And something changed! And He was
bringing us back together.
Wait don’t cue the doves and Kenny G music yet. There was a moment in flying back from the
Balkans that it hit me, “Wait, we didn’t like each other much when we weren’t
Jesus followers, what makes me think we will like each other now that we are?” But when I walked into the gym where we were
to meet our families after our arrival, I saw the most beautiful person I’ve
ever seen in my life. It was the first
time I’d seen my wife without the veil of sin covering my eyes.
But wait…
We had a lot of work to do.
Work. There’s that
word again. We knew that the damage we’d
done to one another wouldn’t be healed up easily. Oh yeah, and besides being made new
creations, we still lacked the resources and tools to make a strong
marriage. We were now walking in grace,
a little less young, but still dumb. We
had some learning and maturing to do.
But where would we turn?
To Jesus…well of course.
But also…
To His church.
The first weekend I was home, Angie and I were determined to
find a church where God was working. She
suggested the Nazarene church in Clarksville because that’s where she’d gotten
saved. Not having any idea what a
Nazarene was, I reluctantly said ok. And
that’s where it started, my first weekend back from deployment. Immediately Angie and I connected to a church
family that took interest in us.
Crazy, right?
Here was a group of people who wanted to make an investment
in a couple, former alcoholics, messy, broken, bar-hopping, bouncer,
party-going, still a little rough around the edges. What were they thinking? Ah, they were just showing us the same love
and acceptance that Jesus had already shown us.
We didn’t know much about words like “Incarnation” back then, but
quickly that community became the hands and feet of Jesus in our lives.
And then…
They said, “We’ve got tools.”
And boy did they ever.
We were surrounded with love, encouragement, wisdom, and
healthy examples of what a faith-filled couple looks like. Each Thursday evening for about 6 months or
more, a lay person named Earl came to our home at 9pm after our children had
gone to bed and poured into our lives.
He was discipling us (we didn’t know that word either). He talked to us about what it means to be
healthy followers of Jesus and serve one another selflessly. He began to help us understand the work
required in making marriage work.
Then there were those two couples.
Remember that damage we did for three years? Well one night that came to surface. In that moment, we were threatened. This thing could go either way. Some pain, some scars aren’t healed easily or
at a moment at an altar. Sometimes they
take time. AND…community! That night two couples were there for
us. The guys took me to a different
house. The women stayed with Angie at
our house.
How long?
All night! There they
stood alongside us, wept with us, prayed us through the evening, and for the
days and weeks following continually spoke into our lives. We wouldn’t have made it through that night
had it not been for the church.
That’s right, I said it.
The church saved our marriage.
They taught us crazy things.
You know like, “the world doesn’t revolve around either of us.” (I still struggle with that one.) They taught us how to communicate with one
another. They walked through the grief
process of the death of both of Angie’s parents. In fact, when Angie’s mother died three weeks
after we arrived at our first Senior Pastor assignment without insurance, it
was the church, Erin Church of the Nazarene, in Tennessee, that took up a
secret offering to pay for the funeral expenses in full.
They taught us about commitment and devotion.
I still remember driving home from church one morning when
it hit me, “Angie, divorce is no longer an option.” She said, “How can you say that? You don’t know what might happen.” I said, “As long as it’s not an option then
we will have to live each and every day like it’s not an option. That means if we are stuck with one another
from this day forward, we better be more committed to blessing one another than
being obnoxiously selfish.”
But that wasn’t all…
They taught us to be committed Jesus followers. We learned about the necessity of prayer to
guard our tongues from saying things we’d later regret. We discovered the necessity of maintaining
purity in our sexuality with one another, to protect our intimacy from outside
influences. We even learned that our
marriage isn’t the end all be all. Our
marriage was caught up into something bigger than us.
It is the Kingdom of God.
Our marriage isn’t simply about our happiness. It is about living lives that give credible
witness to redemptive, reconciling, restorative Kingdom of God. That means the picture I have isn’t simply
about the picture. It means that the
daily sacrificial, selfless, humble, thoughtful, peace-making actions and words
that dot the landscape of our lives give human flesh to the Kingdom of
God.
Wait a minute.
That means…we were being shaped in our marriage to be the
hands and feet of Jesus to others. Now
the church wasn’t just helping us. We
were the church giving our lives away to others.
And then…
You know what happened as we learned new tools? A picture started to emerge. It was no longer a picture of survival, but
instead, a picture of flourishing. We
could, because of Jesus and the impact of His church see a future. And in that picture I was goosing my wife in
the kitchen at 65.
