Thirty years and three things I've learned

It’s hard to believe, but 30 years ago today Anne and I exchanged marriage vows.  I wish I could tell you that it has been an easy 30 years or 30 years of bliss but that wouldn’t exactly be accurate.  The truth is that it’s been a hard run in many ways.  We didn’t date very long when we married--we dated two weeks and I asked her to marry me-- and we would have married in about a month; but my parents were out of the country, and they told me they would be extremely upset if we married without them present.  So we waited another two months.  The reality is we didn’t know each other and as it turned out, we were very different.  They say opposites attract, and that must have been what happened to us, because it wasn’t long into the marriage that those differences became pronounced. 

But a bigger hurdle to overcome was probably unrealized expectations.   You may think, as the stereotype would go, that Anne came to our marriage with grandiose expectations for marriage but by her own testimony she really didn’t have any.  It was I who had a head full of expectations.  Ever since I was a young seventeen-year-old I had longed to find the woman who would walk through life with me as my wife, and I had a dream of what that would look like.   Unfortunately, our marriage was different than the imaginings I had anticipated, and reconciling my dreams with reality was hard.

So we had ups and downs in marriage.  There were some good times but there were many where we struggled greatly.  I remember one year when heading to the SBC Convention in New Orleans, I left Anne crying because our relationship was so difficult.  God used my brother to open my eyes to some really detrimental attitudes and practices I was employing in my marriage and God radically changed in my heart upon my return.  We went to counseling numerous times in our marriage seeking help and though we’d often fall back into trouble, I think counseling helped every time. 

During our marriage God blessed us with six incredible kids that both of us adored.  We had three boys and three girls and I often said that God gave us the “Brady Bunch”-- boy-girl, boy-girl, boy girl.  We did our best to raise them to love the Lord Jesus and love each other.   Anne and I never “fought.”  By that I mean we were both raised in homes where our parents never yelled at each other, and that had never been our practice either.  In spite of our struggles, we weren’t openly combative and I believe that our kids felt relatively secure in our relationship.

We are now celebrating 30 years of marriage and I believe one of the reasons we managed to make it this far was the fact that we came to our marriage with a no-divorce policy.  When we got married we were committed to no divorce.  I don’t believe we ever talked about divorce, as we were committed to not even using that as a bargaining chip.  I wish I could tell you divorce never entered my heart, but that would not be true.  There came a time in my life when I gave up on our marriage and I wanted out.  If not for my fear of hurting my children, my church family and my Savior, Jesus, I most likely would have. 

With Anne's permission, I’d like to share with you three vital truths we’ve learned experientially in the last three decades.  Maybe you’ve been blessed with a fulfilling marriage, with little or no troubles, then most of this won't really apply.  Thank God for such a blessing.  But if like Anne and I you have had your struggles, maybe you will find this helpful.  

First, never think it can’t happen to you.  No one goes into marriage expecting anything but marital bliss; no one expects to fail or be anything but very happy.  The legendary myth was that one out of every two marriages fail but we now know that is just a statistic that was passed on and on without any basis in statistical analysis.  But the truth is still too many marriages fail, probably closer to one in four, but the reality is that no marriage is fail-proof.  When Anne and I were married the premarital counselor told us that we would probably struggle; I remember thinking how ludicrous that notion was.  Not us!  Never!  He didn’t know what he was talking about but even before the honeymoon to OBX was over, the cracks in our fail proof marriage were showing.  I never would have believed we'd struggle before the ceremony—no one could have convinced me-- but two sinful people are always in jeopardy of failing, including Anne and I, and including you.

Second, if you quit investing in your marriage, or in any relationship for that matter, it will not stay the same.  It will begin to degenerate and there will come a time when it is no longer ok to just be there but uninvolved.  When I quit investing in our relationship, Anne and I slipped further and further apart and eventually there came a time when I wanted out of my marriage.   Relationships are always built on people giving and receiving; if one stops that process, the relationship dies—it doesn’t stay the same—there is no neutral zone.

Third, marriage is what sustains love; love doesn’t sustain marriage.  That was Detrick Bonheoffer’s conviction and I’ve discovered it to be true.  I know that love is really much more than feelings, but let me talk about feelings of love for just a minute.  I believe that romantic love is important, we see it portrayed for us in the Bible in the Song of Solomon, but it's only a part of marriage.  Today we live in a culture when the emotions of romantic love and happiness are the highest ideals in marriage.  The Supreme Court just ruled that marriage is all about romantic love; gender and children are immaterial to marriage.  The problem is that if you make romantic love the highest goal in marriage, when you lose those feelings of love your marriage is in danger of ending.  So many divorces happen because people fall out of love and they are no longer happy.  A common cry of our day is, “I just want to be happy,” and when our spouse doesn’t make us happy anymore, the marriage ends. 

However a study by the National Survey of Families and Households found that 86 percent of unhappily married people who stick it out find that, five years later, their marriages are happier. Most say, they’ve become very happy indeed. In fact, nearly three-fifths of those who said their marriage was unhappy in the late ’80s and who stay married, rated this same marriage as either “very happy” or “quite happy” when interviewed again in the early 1990s.  Here's the point, if couples will stay married they can often find a way to work through the difficult times; I found that to be true.  My commitment to Jesus and his view of marriage, kept me from bailing on Anne and today we’re recovering the love that had grown emotionally cold.  

Now, before I leave this post someone might be saying, "Wonderful, I'm glad your marriage turned around and you guys are doing better but that can never happen for us."  Or someone else might be thinking, "This gives me hope but I don't even know where to begin."  Truly I can relate to both those thoughts-- I understand them clearly.  I don't mean to imply that any of what I've written is easy or without pain and much sacrifice.  I'd say that most of us who struggle need a third party to listen and help us sort through impasses that come along.  But the key to change, the first step to making it different, goes back to the second thing I learned: I can't choose to stay disconnected, unwilling to invest, and expect the marriage to change for the better.  Such a disconnected stance will only lead to the absolute disintegration of the marriage.  So the turn around that happened to us can happen to you, and the place to begin is to recommit yourself to invest.  Forgive the past and press into the future.  I know it's hard, but open yourself back up to give, to feel and even to be hurt again.

As Anne and I begin this fourth decade as a married couple, we're hopeful for all that lies ahead.  This morning Anne wrote me a note and I want to share with you the last paragraph: "But we have had some good times!  We have been together 10,950 days; We have been pregnant 1,596 days; We have been to 30 beach vacations; Been to Alabama about 50 times; Eaten about 21,900 meals together.  Well...you get it.  We have done a lot together.  Let's hang out together 30 more years.  Let's laugh more.  Go more places.  See more things.  Love each other better.  Let's make the last 30 the best!  I love you forever!"   We really have no idea all that God has in store for us in the years to come.  I know we're hopeful for more daughters-in-law and sons-in-law, and we're both looking forward to the grandparent years.  We're even entertaining the idea of foster parenting and one day going to the nations as missionaries in our retirement.  So many possibilities lie ahead of us in the years to come and of this one thing I'm confident, Jesus kept us by His grace and He will surely keep us 'til the end!