Just How Valuable Is Your Marriage?
February 4th, 2010 Posted in General Updates
After crashing at our students’ apt. over the Ukr/Polish border on Sunday night, we drove in our frozen van the 6+ hours to Krakow for a JV large- scale marriage conference, talking pretty much non-stop the entire ride, and getting KFC and Polish McDonalds every stop we could (the menu is better than the Ukr McDs, but we’re not complaining. And who brags about going to KFC? Missionaries do.)
We’d found an old marriage survey from our great leaders, the Laremores, a pastor and his wife from NJ who invested weekly into our marriage for our first 3+ years. It was basically a questionnaire of “how am I doing as your spouse in the following categories?”
- I pray with my spouse on a regular basis. I pray for my spouse on a regular basis.
- I praise my spouse in public. I do not speak unwholesomely about my husband/wife to others.
- I encourage my spouse to grow as an individual, and allow them to pursue personal interests, talents, …
- I speak honestly and openly to my spouse.
- Particularly in conflict, I treat my wife with love/I treat my husband with respect
- I enter into my spouse’s “world” and invite them to better understand yours.
- Do we invite Christ into all personal problems.
- Am I living with the power of the Holy Spirit?
That questionnaire launched us into a 4-day conference that was wonderful, first looking at the design of man and woman from God’s point of view, then going through a seminar on repentance and fixing heart issues, not just trying unsuccessfully to change behaviors, really discussing what it means to be one flesh (and what that does NOT mean, i.e. you are not to be one with your children; you are not to live parallel lives that sometimes coincide; dealing with problems in physical intimacy), how he needs unconditional respect and she needs unconditional love, and so on. Each day there were blocks of hours allotted for us to take alone time, answering more and more questions, dealing with deep issues that don’t get resolved in the day-in and day-out of marriage. There were a lot of lightbulb moments, like “oh, so that’s why she reacts like that.” and “I never even realized I was cutting him down when I do that.”
We went into this believing that we have a strong, healthy marriage. We left, thrilled with the areas that God clearly showed us we need to work on, humbled by the verse “do not think you are standing firm, lest you fall”, and excited by the fact that it can keep getting better, especially when the Holy Spirit is the constant center (not just when we remember to invite Him in, or when we’re desperate for help in some area.)
