There have been things that have made people look at our family and say, “You’re not like most Christians I know.”
Usually, they mean something along the lines of:
- You’re not as judgemental as I expected.
- You’re not as narrow-minded as I expected.
- You’re not as bigoted as I expected.
- You’re not …you’re not….you’re not…. [insert whatever their personal prior experience with Christians has been]
(It could be construed as kind of offensive. After all, I don’t say to other religious people “You’re not like most Muslims I know.” But I get it. I really do. A lot of people have a bad taste in their mouth from Christians or Christianity; usually related to their personal experience as a child or with a friend or a parent or on television.)
Amongst Christians, I’ve also heard this about me and Brian. And usually it has to do with our marriage: “You’re not like most couples I know” and, if that person is/was a Christian, they follow it with “especially evangelicals.”
I used to think it was because we had a pretty solid marriage without a lot of drama. Neither one of us have any deep, dark secrets from each other. Maybe that’s because we got together when we were so young! No time for deep, dark secrets to really fester. LOL
For some reason, Brian and I have always had an ease to our relationship. Even when circumstances have been abysmal or heartbreaking or frustrating or cruel, we have never been the issue. Our marriage hasn’t been the source of that sorrow or heartbreak or frustration. We aren’t screamers or fighters. We never call each other names. We disagree but usually its resolved in a healthy fashion. We haven’t had unhealthy relationships with others. We try not to talk badly about each other. We try to support each other’s dreams and priorities. We have a great amount of chemistry and tenderness towards each other, an abandon.
Just like everyone else.
It’s not perfect; trust me, we have our moments, just like everyone else. We have deeply hurt one another. But we have somehow managed to keep a deep, abiding love for one another central, above most everything. I used to chalk it up to things like we were best friends, we enjoyed the same activities, we laughed a lot, we were compatible, we were just easy-going people yada, yada, yada.
For a long time, I even believed (and still do, to an extent - but I won’t say how far of an extent in case it freaks you out) that we were simply soulmates. Destined to be together, united in all aspects. And because we were “meant to be”, we, quite simply, just were and are.
But lately, I have wondered if that’s it. Surely those things aren’t unique. Those things aren’t that different. A lot of people consider themselves “soulmates” and yet hurt the dickens out of each other. Or argue like crazy. Or secretly think in the corners of their mind, “Maybe someday I could leave him/her. Maybe things would be easier if I just wasn’t married anymore.”
(Sidenote: A bunch of “our kids” are getting married now. I think we’ve had 10 weddings so far this year. A lot of them have emailed us, asking for advice. We’ve given lots of advice, usually along the lines of what I wrote above. The biggest bit of advice that we give is that if any part of you isn’t sure, then don’t get married. Love and marriage are hard enough without entering into it with doubt. Brian always says that if you are even wondering “is this it?” or “should we get married” or “is he the one?” or one of you is doing the convincing, then call it. There shouldn’t be a tremendous amount of pressure to get married right away or feel like “this is as good as it gets”. Once you’re married, that’s a different story….if he wasn’t the one before, well, baby, he sure is now. But before marriage? Be picky.)
I’ve always thought you need to marry someone that you can be everything you are with and also everything you will be. Let’s face it: we change a lot in our life. The person I am today is pretty different than the person I was when Brian and I fell in love at 19. And very different again from the person I was just 3 years ago. And very different from the woman I will be in 5, 10, 25 years. And Brian has changed, even more significantly than I have, over the years. His opinions, his theology, his priorities – you name it, he’s evaluated it. So is this someone that you can change with? Or would they freak out if you start to change? I know one couple whose marriage nearly fell apart because she put on weight. And another couple that are on the brink of divorce over changes in careers. There are others that just feel like they have outgrown each other. This underlying feeling of “You’re not who I thought you were” can cripple individual and joint growth in one another.
I think that change is one of the greatest strengths of Christianity. The promise of transformation means that I don’t have to die the same person I am today – thank you, Jesus! If I was the same person I was at 19, I think I’d crawl into bed and not want to get out ever again. Can you grow together? Can you allow each other room to change? To try on different ideas? Can you grow and change together?
Another thing though that we’ve started to realise is different about our marriage and maybe worth sharing is this: How we view marriage and, in particular, “roles” also called “submission”. I think that our views on marriage tend to be rather different than what is taught in most evangelical churches, particularly in conservative corners. And maybe that’s why we, nearly 10 years into our relationship, 8 of them married, are still wildly in love. I don’t mean that we have an open marriage or anything quite that out there. Rather, I mean that people seem to get a kick out of our policy of “you first“.
In most of the non-Christian world’s teaching, the idea of marriage is “love yourself first, then you can love others.” In its most extreme form, it looks like two people, just out to get theirs, individuals that happen to be living togther. There isn’t ANY submission between each other. Everyone is out for number one, their own happiness, their own dreams, their own vision, their own satisfaction. Meaning that, ultimately, hierarchy wins, even in this most intimate of relationships.
But in a lot of marriage books or marriage counselling or marriage teaching in Church, we hear a lot about that heavy word, SUBMISSION. It’s enough to send most women screaming, me included. And then men either feel like they are not “leading” their home and therefore resentful of their wives because “she just won’t submit” or feel an inordinate amount of responsibility, borne on their shoulders alone, for the family or they just emotionally disengage from their wives because they feel “above her”.
Even those couples that have a strong and healthy marriage often teach or model the rule “but when the buck stops, he’s in charge” or “at the end of the day, he’s the head of the home” or “I influence, he decides”. Meaning that, ultimately, hierarchy wins, even in this most intimate of relationships.
And we just don’t agree with that/believe it/practice that. Our opinion has always been “we are in charge, together”.
On the inside of our wedding rings, we have a passage of Scripture that, to me, sums up our relationship more NOW than it did when we put them on for the first time.
My wedding ring says “I am my beloved’s.”
And Brian’s says “And she is mine.”
(From Rob Bell’s “Sex God”, Chapter 6) She speaks a paradox. Two things are going on here. She’s giving. Giving herself away. Letting go. Losing herself in her lover. And yet she’s also getting something in return: the other person. Her lover, at the same time, has let go and fallen into her. There is something about losing yourself to another and their losing themselves in you at the same time that defies our ability to categorize. Healthy marriages all have this sense of mutual abandon to each other. They’ve both jumped, in essence, into the arms of the other. There is a sense of mutual abandon between them. If one holds back, if one refrains, it doesn’t work.”
So, this is how we look at it: mutual submission. Neither one of us is the head, neither one of us is the tail. The idea of submission has been used for centuries to subjugate women, to justify abuses and generally rip the heart out of half the globe while crippling the other half that uses the word “submit” like a bat. But there is value and goodness in the word and in the concept in a marriage.
It’s just that we don’t think “submission” only lines up with our gender.
(This portion taken from “Sex God” by Rob Bell, Chapter 6) The word submit occurs only a couple of times in the Bible, most notably in the letter to the Ephesians, chapter 5. The section begins in verse 21 with the command, “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.”
The word submit is the Greek word “jupotasso”, and its actually two words stuck together: the word “upo”, which means “under”,and the word “tasso”, which is translated “to place in order”. To submit means “to place ourself under, to give allegiance to, to tend to the needs of, to be responsive to.” Some scholars believe it originated as a military term, in the sense that when soldiers submit, they place themselves under their commanding officer. The passage says we are to place ourselves under one another out of reverence, or respect, for Christ. This reference to Jesus calls us to follow his example, his sacrifice, his giving his life for ours. As its written in the book of John, “For God so loved the word that he gave his one and only son.” At the heart of the worldview of a Christian is the simple truth that people are worth dying for…..
So the teaching of the passage in Ephesians is to love and serve the people around you, placing their needs ahead of your own, out of respect and reverence for Jesus, who gave his life for us, the ultimate act of love and sacrifice. Die to yourselves, so that others can live. Like Jesus. This passage is being written to a church, to a group of people. The “you” here is plural, meaning many people are being addressed with these words. This church is being taught how to live together in such a way that when people observe their lives together, they will see what Jesus is like.
In Greek, the passage continues, “Wives, to your husbands as to the Lord.” Did you notice that a word is missing?
We’re missing a verb. The word submit is not in the verse. You have to go looking for the verb, which is in the verse before it.
The wife isn’t commanded to do anything different from what everybody is commanded to do in the previous verse, namely submitting. Placing the needs of others ahead of her own, especially in her most significant relationship – the one with her husband.
Verse 23 is next: “For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior.”
The word head is the word kephale in the Greek language. We could spend hours analyzing exactly what that means but the larger point is that the husband is supposed to be like Christ. And what does that look like?
Notice how the text continues. Verse 24 repeats the submit command, and then verse 25 reads: “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.”
Christ’s headship comes from his giving himself up for the church.
His sacrifice.
His surrender.
His willingness to give himself away for her.
His death.
Whatever authority the word “head” carries with it is rooted in the sacrifice of Chris and therefore the sacrifice of the husband.
So the husband is commanded to lay down his life for his wife and the wife is commanded to submit to her husband, but they are both commanded to submit to each other because everyone is commanded to submit to everyone else and all of this is out of “reverence for Christ.”
And that sort of sums it up for us. We don’t see submission as my job or as Brian’s. It is very clear to me at all times that Brian places me and my needs (and the needs of our kids) above his own. And I hope that that is clear to him on my part as well.
Sometimes we make decisions together that are very hard to make. But we never move forward until we are in agreement. There is no “because I said so” or “I’ve said my piece, I leave it on your head”. We take equal ownership for our marriage, our life, our kids and even each other. We have “lost track of whose really in charge.”
Because to be honest, neither one of us is in charge. We submit to one another because both of us are fully submitted to God.
We have mutually abandoned ourselves to one another. And found our true selves as reward.
