13 Amazing Grace
You didn’t do it, and the sooner you understand that, the better it will be for you and your marriage. You couldn’t have done it. You’re simply not that powerful and not that wise. You and I like to think that it was all our initiative, but it wasn’t. When you face the fact that your marital story is all about the wisdom and will of Another, your understanding of marriage completely changes forever.
I was raised in the white-bread normalcy of Toledo, Ohio. My dad worked at a sporting goods store, and my mother was an IBM keypunch operator. Everything about my family was Midwest American normal. The big event of my childhood was when we moved to the suburbs, to the little town of Maumee. Life in Ohio was an endlessly repeated routine. It would have made sense that I graduate from high school, go to college, at some point marry an Ohio girl, and settle in to repeat the routine for another generation. But the one who is the Author of my story had another plan.
There was a little girl named Luella who was born in Placettas, Cuba. Luella was the daughter of Canadian missionary parents. From the vantage point of an Ohio boy, her life was anything but normal. She lived a life in which she was surrounded by a big extended “family” as part of her everyday experience. Ministry was the thing that took her family to Cuba and shaped the way they lived. She lived in a land of white-sand beaches, palm trees, and avocados. Her favorite snack was Cuban crackers with queso blanco and guava paste. Throughout most of my childhood I never saw the ocean. I certainly did not know that there was such a thing as a guava or an avocado! The closest I came to a beach was the shores of Lake Erie.
The revolution of Che Guevara and Fidel Castro took Luella’s fam- ily to Hartsville, South Carolina, still far from Toledo in distance and culture. Her father pastored a small church, and her mother worked as a seamstress. Hartsville was a quaint and quiet Southern town of ten thousand people. It really was the deep and sleepy South.
My parents had discovered a little Christian college in Columbia, South Carolina, that gave a good biblical education, and they really wanted me to go there for at least a couple years before I went anywhere else. I wasn’t excited about that. I was a bit concerned about the traditional conservatism of the South, but I applied and was accepted.
I went to college with a closed mind and an apprehensive heart. I was not interested in putting down any roots or in making any long-term relationships, including with any of the female students I would find there. I expected all the women to look as if they had just stepped off an Amish farm or, on the other hand, that they all would be fresh from the bush of Africa or the jungles of South America and know little of American culture. I was interested in the Beatles, Bob Dylan, and the Vietnam War. I wasn’t really interested in meeting someone who had plans to return to the wilderness!
My first week in college was hard. I hated everything about the environment I was in. In fact, I didn’t unpack my things that whole first week because I was convinced there was no way that I would stay. I had been forced to cut my hair, even though I had already cut off several inches; it was an indignity I would not forgive! However, I made it through the orientation week and decided to stay.
Luella had enrolled in the same college (just sixty miles from her home) the year before. Her first year was one of constant personal struggle, but she decided to return. The very first lunch that returning students ate at the cafeteria on the first day after orientation week, I stood behind Luella in the cafeteria line. I was immediately smitten. She didn’t look as though she had Amish parents or had just arrived from the jungle. She was stylish and beautiful, and I couldn’t take my eyes off her. As I mentioned earlier, it was love at first sight for me. For Luella, it was first sight!
I decided that I would find out about her, and within a month we had had our first date. Luella was not interested in a long-term relationship and told me not to ask her out again. But I did and she accepted. I determined that I would continue to ask as long as she continued to accept and, as they say, the rest is history.
My life has been changed and enhanced by Luella in a thousand ways. There is no way that I would be who I am, doing what I am doing, without her. I cannot imagine what my journey would have been like without her. She is my hero and my dearest friend. There is no one on earth I would rather spend time with. There is no voice in my life more influential than hers. I am deeply blessed to be married to someone like her, and I know I could have never found her on my own.
The story of my marriage really does illustrate a powerful theological point. You and I are not the authors of our own story. Think with me for a moment. Let your mind expand and your heart reflect in wonder. Think of all the locations, situations, and relationships—individual, cultural, national, and international—that you would have to have absolute control over to guarantee that this little girl from Cuba and this little boy from Ohio would meet at any time and in any way. Consider the mathematical possibility. Consider how little of these situations, locations, and relationships Luella and I had any involvement in, let alone any control over. Consider how neither of us had any idea whatsoever that the other existed or that our stories were marching toward that fateful moment of intersection. Consider how neither one of us was insightful enough to find one another or to understand how our lives would mold together. And consider how we could not have written the story of our relationship since that first day of meeting.
Now, you know that our story is not unique. You know that your life has not worked according to your plan. Last month didn’t work according to your plan. Last week didn’t work according to your plan. Some of you are a bit ruffled as you read this today because you are being confronted with the reality that yesterday didn’t work according to your plan. Ten years ago you couldn’t have written yourself into the situation in which you are now living. Luella and I are living in a loft in Chinatown, Philadelphia. There is no way that I could have ever known that this was the direction my story was taking.
You don’t need to read a mystery novel; your life is a mystery that only makes sense to you after the fact. When it comes to marriage, you didn’t do it, and the sooner you come to understand what this means, the better. Yes, you made decisions along the way, and the decisions were very important and left a trail of consequences. But there is something even more foundational going on, and when you understand it, you will have a new understanding of the struggle of marriage and what to do about it.
THE ARTIST OF YOUR MARRIAGE
No one plans to struggle in marriage, but we all do. People don’t think that differences between them and their spouse will in some way and at some time bring them to the end of themselves, but such differences always do. You have to ask, “What is all this about?” This is where it is vital to understand that the biblical story is the only story that can make sense out of the story of your life and your marriage.
The biblical story begins with the Creator. John 1:3 says, “All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.” The physical world and all that is in it is a 24/7, surround-sound, Technicolor display of the creative artistry of God. If you stop, look, and listen for a moment, it will blow you away.
I was in three cities last week: Denver, Philadelphia, and Phoenix. I was in the locations of three mountain ranges, but they couldn’t have been more different from one another. You would think that you could use the word mountain, and everyone reading it would immediately know what you were describing, but this simply isn’t the case. The vastness of God’s creative design prevents it from being that simple. I was amazed as we drove through the sheer, rock-faced splendor of the majestic Rockies at the intimidating glory of these mountains. I listened to the rapids of the mountain river as it coursed its way down through the canyon; it sounded like a spontaneous ovation for the beauty that was visible everywhere. I said to myself as we drove on, “Now these are mountains!” You see, I am used to the Pocono Mountains near Philadelphia, where I live. When measured against the Rockies, the Poconos aren’t really mountains. I have reasoned that the Poconos are just God’s speed bumps to slow you down before you hit the ocean at the Jersey Shore.
At the end of the week I was in the Catalina Mountains in the Phoenix area. These are bleak, sharp-edged desert mountains, their angles only softened by the angular cacti that march, with hands raised, toward their barren peaks. Each range came out of the mind of God. Each was constructed by his finger, and each is a sign that points to his glory. I could say more about how different the vegetation is in each location, how each is inhabited by different creatures, and how each has weather that is unique to its setting, but you get the point.
What does this have to do with your marriage? You will only ever begin to understand the struggles you face as a couple in forming a marriage of real and functional unity, and how to forge a lifestyle of real respect and appreciation between you, when you begin to look at your marriage through the lens of Genesis 1. The real and significant differences between you began in the mind of the Creator. Everything that makes up your wife—what she looks like, her innate gifts, and her particular personality—came out of the mind of an incredibly creative designer. Everything that makes up your husband—what he looks like, his innate gifts, and his particular personality—came out of the mind of an incredibly creative designer. He was not locked into one model of what a human being is. There is no end to the gradations of differences that he can form into the hardwiring of a human being. There seems to be no end to the endless variety of body design. There seems to be no end to the range of human personality. There seems to be no end to the catalog of built-in human gifts and abilities.
Think about it: some people are mechanical, some analytical, some conceptual, some mathematical, some organizational, some artistic, and some relational. Some people are outgoing and extroverted, some are quiet and introverted, and some are middle-of-the-road verts! Yet even inside each of these categories there are vast differences. Consider hair color (bottled color excluded) and hair texture and the endless variety of combinations. Look around at the size and shape of people’s jaws, noses, foreheads, ears, chins, lips, teeth, and cheeks and consider the endless variety of the architecture of human faces. Then combine that with all the variables of body shape with size of limbs and torso and with weight and girth. You will never find two human beings who look completely alike. Not even identical twins are completely identical.
When you start with Genesis 1, you are confronted with the fact that it is virtually impossible for you to marry someone who is like you. Because you were not formed by some evolutionary factory that manufactured you by a strict set of scientific formulas but by the hand of an infinite divine artist, you are unique. There is no one quite like you. You will never marry your clone, and in marriage you will never be able to turn your husband or wife into your clone.
Here’s where all this leads: unity in marriage is not the result of sameness. You will never ever be exactly the same as your spouse. God has designed that you will be married to someone different from you. Unity is, rather, the result of what husband and wife do in the face of the inevitable differences that exist in the lives of every married couple. So, what are you to do with the differences between you and your spouse, which constantly confront you in your marriage? Let me suggest some things.
Celebrate your Creator. Dealing with your differences in a way that builds a sturdy bond of unity between you begins here. The more you look at your spouse and see the imprint of God’s fingers and are amazed, the more you will be able to resist the temptation to try to remake him or her in your own image. The more you esteem what God has created, the less you will want to remake it. The more you see divine beauty and divine glory in the differences between you, the less you will be irritated by them. Here is the bottom line: the more you look at your husband or wife and honor God as creator, the more you will tend to esteem and appreciate the person who you live with, who is so incredibly different from you.
Refuse to see the differences as right or wrong. When we talk about what the Creator has hardwired into your husband or wife, we are not talking about things that are morally right or morally wrong. For example, Luella is not a time-oriented person. By nature, she is much more attuned to the task she is doing or the person she is with. She approaches life with a thoughtful slowness. She is seldom in a rush or distracted by the next thing on her schedule. I am her complete opposite. I am very project-oriented. I try to get as many things done in a day as I possibly can. I am very time-oriented, and I am always thinking about what I need to do next.
This difference between us in time orientation is not a matter of maturity or morality. I am not a better person than Luella because I tend to be more oriented to time and punctuality, and Luella is not more righteous than me because she is better able to attend to the task of the moment. We have been put together by an amazing Creator. We are both people but are very different at the same time.
When you begin to think and act as though your hardwiring makes you better, more mature, or more righteous than your spouse, you will act and respond in ways that are dismissive and disrespectful. And when you respond this way, you not only do not build the unity of your marriage, but you also create pockets of needless and debilitating conflict.
Determine to respond to your differences with appreciation and respect. This will take a change in orientation, attitude, and action for many of us. We are used to being impatient and irritated in the face of differences. We are used to subtly disrespecting those differences. And we are used to doing what is necessary to get our own way. Here’s what you need to face: those responses are more about your relationship with God than they are about your relationship with your husband or wife. It is not your husband or wife’s choices that you are rejecting, but God’s. Luella didn’t decide to be methodical any more than she decided her height. It is God who formed your spouse with his or her natural gifts and personality, and after he did, he stood back and declared your spouse “good.” It is hurtful to your spouse when you disrespect her for things she did not choose or reject her for things she cannot change. Every difference is an opportunity to celebrate God’s creative artistry and a chance to communicate specific respect and appreciation for who God has formed your spouse to be.
Learn where your differences create difficulty and call yourself to unification work. There is no doubt about it: the things that I now celebrate, I once struggled with greatly. I did think that when it comes to time, I was right and Luella was wrong. I did think that I was a better creator than the Creator, so I worked, to no avail, to re-create Luella in my image. To my regret, I said and did things that were dismissive and disrespectful. Early in our marriage, I had no sense of how much I needed Luella in my life.
What I failed to do was examine our differences with a commitment to do anything within my power, as I dealt with them, to grow and deepen our unity. No, what I did caused disharmony and disunity. I was convinced that unless Luella and I were the same, we would never be unified. Because of this, I did not work to build a solid unity around our differences. Luella is better at a house-painting project than I am because she doesn’t mind taking her time. I am better at laying the schedule for a vacation because I am more realistic about time. We have learned to capitalize on each other’s unique God-designed strengths, and this protects both of us from our natural weaknesses. We have learned that the greatest mutual benefit has come from our places of biggest struggle. And we continue to work at not fighting over what God means for us to benefit from.
Admit where these differences challenge you to grow. What I struggled with was the fact that these differences were calling me to grow and change. I needed to be more patient. I needed to be more appreciative and respectful. I needed to be kinder and more encouraging in those moments when we were discussing our differences. I needed to be more humble and approachable. I needed to have my selfishness and self-righteousness exposed. I was so busy looking at Luella with a critical eye that I had little time or interest in looking with an examining eye at myself. I was angry that she just didn’t get it, and I responded in anger again and again. I didn’t get what God was doing. He was using his Creator hardwiring to expose character deficiencies. Our differences not only reflected his glory; they were for our good, and when I got that, I began to change (character) and quit trying to change things in Luella (hardwiring) that will simply never change. This sets up what we must look at next.
PLANNED STRUGGLE
The struggle over differences is not some cosmic accident; no, it is a plan. You see, the same God whose creative artistry created the hardwired differences you and your spouse experience daily brought you together for his plan and purpose. Recognizing his sovereignty is key to understanding your marriage struggle and what to do about it.
We began this chapter with recognizing that each of our marriage stories has been authored by Another. We now want to reflect on his reason for doing what he has done in each of our marriages. Let me give you the steps of the biblical plan that you need to understand if you are ever going to deal, in an attitude of humility and grace, with the differences that you have with your spouse.
1) God is in absolute control of the details of our lives. I have written many times that I find Acts 17:24–27 to be one of the most helpful and encouraging discussions in the New Testament of God’s rulership over our lives:
The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, in the hope that they might feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us.
Here is Paul’s basic view of God’s involvement in the details of his life: “Having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place . . . ” (v. 26b). What does Paul mean by these words? Well, let me paraphrase. God determines the precise place where each of us will live (“boundaries of their dwelling place”) and the exact length of our lives (“having determined allotted periods”). It is God who determines the precise details of location, situations, and relationship in which each of us lives. This means not only that God is in control of where you end up and who you finally live with, but also that, in order to do this, he has been in control of everything that brought you to where you are. This means that God has been in control of all the experiential, cultural, and familial influences that shaped how you desire, think, act, and respond. So, God is in control not only of the locations in which you live, but also of the influences that have shaped you as a person. He has not only written the story of you and your spouse and determined that your stories would intersect, but he has controlled all the things that have made you different from one another.
As you struggle, you must not view your marriage as bad luck, or poor planning, or as a mess that you made for yourself. No, God is right smack-dab in the middle of your struggle. He is not surprised by what you are facing today. He is up to something.
2) He has a purpose for the situations and locations in which he places us. What is the question that every believer somehow, someway, asks at some time? Here it is: “Why would a God of love and wisdom purposely plan for us to struggle?” This is a question that must be answered if we are ever going to understand our marriage and how to respond to it in a way that promotes unity, love, and understanding.
To answer this question, we have to step back and look at the big picture. In the here and now, God’s focused zeal is redemption. What does that mean? Well, if you are God’s child, the power of sin has been broken in your life (see Rom. 6:1–14). But you still have a deep problem. The presence of sin still remains. God is unwilling to rest, unwilling to leave you to yourself, until every microbe of sin has been eradicated from every cell of your heart. So this is the thing that he is working on in the here and now. He is working to rescue you from you, to deliver you from sin, and to form the character of Jesus in you.
So, this means that marriage, the world’s most long-term and comprehensive relationship, is taking place in the middle of sanctification, the world’s most important unfinished process. Why would God do this? Wouldn’t it be easier to completely change us than to have us marry? Hasn’t he gotten the proverbial cart before the proverbial horse? Well, the reason this doesn’t seem to make sense to us is that our purpose for marriage tends to be different from the Lord’s. We’re just not on God’s agenda page. Our desire is that our marriages would be the location of our comfort, ease, and enjoyment; we often have desires no bigger than this. But God’s purpose is that each of our marriages would be a tool for something that is way more miraculous and glorious than our tiny, little, self-focused definition of happiness. He has designed marriage to be one of his most effective and efficient tools of personal holiness. He has designed your marriage to change you.
Your differences and the difficulties that they place you in are not a sign that God has forgotten you or has been unfaithful to you. Your difficulties with your differences are not an interruption of his plan; they are part of his plan. Getting this is basic to responding to those difficulties in a new and better way.
3) Marriage is one of God’s primary tools of personal change and growth. I don’t know about you, for sure, but I would imagine you are like me. I have struggled with Luella’s and my differences and resisted change for two reasons. First, I don’t want to deal with the hassle. I want my life to be easy and predictable. I want things to go as I have planned. I want Luella to say, “Yes dear, that is a wonderful idea,” or, “I agree with you completely.” I don’t want to have to deal with an alternative perspective or plan. I want to be sovereign over my world and have it operate in a way that meets the demands of my personal definition of happiness. But that is not all; I tend to think that I don’t need to change. Here’s what I am saying: I am persuaded that beneath our struggle with the differences we have with one another is a desire for self-sovereignty and the delusion of self-righteousness. We want to be more in control than we will ever be, and we think we are more righteous than we actually are.
When we resist change and complain about the daily difficulty of marital differences, we are not first moaning and groaning about the person we live with. No, we are struggling with who God is and who God says we are. The horizontal struggles are the fruit of vertical struggles between us and our Lord. God, in the zeal of his love, is employing our marriages to deliver to us things of eternal value; our struggle is to value these gifts of transforming grace as much as he does.
4) Three main tools of difference are used to reveal and change our hearts. There are three primary tools of difference that God uses in marriage to reveal our hearts. The first tool we have already examined. It is the difference in personal hardwiring that the Creator has formed in each of us. Second is the difference in viewpoints, instincts, and tastes that have been formed in us through the experiential, cultural, and relational influences that we have lived in and which have formed the way we see the world and respond to it. And, finally, there are the differences in personal sin and weakness and in our growth in grace. We are not all in the same place on our journey to Christlike maturity.
It is so important to remember that these three things are not to be viewed as the potholes to be avoided on the road to a good marriage but as effective instruments of change in the hands of a loving, wise, and faithful Redeemer. He is worth trusting, even in those moments when it is hard for us to trust one another, because, no matter what the motives of our spouse might be, our Savior is up to something good.
5) Change begins when we see these differences as grace rather than obstructions of grace. I really do think that there are moments in our marriages when we are crying out for grace, not recognizing that we are getting it. We are not getting the grace of relief or the grace of release, because that is not the grace that we really need. No, what we are getting is something we desperately need, the uncomfortable grace of personal growth and change. With the love of a Father, your Lord is prying open your hands so that you will let go of things that have come to rule your heart but will never satisfy you. With the insight of a seasoned teacher, he is driving you to question your own wisdom so that you will find your understanding and rest in his. With the skill of the world’s best counselor, God is showing you the delusions of your control so that you will take comfort in his rule. With the gentleness of a faithful friend he is facing you toward the inadequacies of your own righteousness so that you find your hope in his.
When you are tired and uncomfortable because you have been called to live with someone who is not like you, what you tell yourself about what you are going through is very important. It is in this moment that you must preach to yourself the theology of uncomfortable grace (See Romans 5; James 1; and 1 Peter 1), because when you do, you begin to be less resistant and more appreciative, and you are on your way to forging a marriage of unity, understanding, and love. Remember, genuine appreciation for your spouse begins with practical, day-by-day worship of God.
6) God is with you in your struggle. I really do love the way Paul talks about God’s rule over the practical details of our daily lives. He says, “. . . that they should seek God, in the hope that they might feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us” (Acts 17:27). Paul is arguing that God’s absolute rule over the intimate details of our lives doesn’t make him distant and unapproachable, like some great chess player in the sky. Paul is actually presenting the opposite here. God is in the middle of the details of your marriage, and because he is, he is near. This means that at any time you can reach out for his help. You are never alone in your struggle. Not only has God determined the situations and relationships in which you will live, but he is with you in them. He will never abandon you in disgust. He will never take a break to rest. He will never get tired and give up. He is near you and for you and will not quit until what he has begun is complete.
DEALING WITH DIFFERENCE: A BEGINNING
So, what are you to do when you are hit with how different you are from your husband or wife? I will suggest a few things here and then complete the discussion in the next chapter. Don’t run away in fear. You haven’t made a horrible mistake. No one has ever married someone who is completely like them. What you are dealing with is part of the plan. Don’t try to comfort yourself by denying the differences that are actually there. I have counseled many engaged couples in a state of deep denial. They were convinced that they could never disagree with one another. I knew my job was to awaken them out of their denial. Don’t resist the other person and fight for your way as if your way is the only way. Remember, when you resist, you are not first resisting your husband or wife; you are resisting God. He calls you to work for unity even though you are different because he knows that this work will not only change your marriage, but it will also change you, and that is exactly what God is after. Don’t allow yourself to be dragged into needless debates and petty battles. Work on differences that make a difference. The pattern on the couch is probably not worth fighting about, but the church you are going to involve yourselves in is. The differences that you have between one another will be used by God to help you get your priorities straight and to practically remember what is important and what is not.
It really is a gorgeous plan; in your marriage God will take you where you never thought you would go in order to give you what you could not achieve on your own. He is working on something that is very good—lasting personal change—and he is with you during the process, giving you what you need, to be what you have been designed to be, and to do what you have been called to do. Now, that is a reason to be encouraged, even on the days that are difficult.