I recently watched a movie on the Hallmark channel in which a married couple went on the honeymoon they never had. They left their three kids with the wife’s sister, a very free spirited person. They went to Europe, but not all was as romantic and wonderful as the husband had hoped. In one scene, that took place in London, the husband is trying to convince his wife to forget going to the show that they had tickets for that night and spending the night in the room. The wife would have nothing of that. She was bound and determined go to the show, after all, they may never get back to London again.
In another scene, the couple is in Paris. There is a problem at home and the wife wants to fly home immediately because she doesn’t trust her sister to handle the situation. The husband objects to going home and finally tells the wife that she can go home if she wants, but he is staying. He goes ahead and checks into their hotel room while the wife goes and reserves a flight home the next day. She comes into their room while the husband is getting ready to go out to dinner for the evening. The following conversation takes place between the husband and the wife (the wife’s words are in italics):
“You want to go home.”
“I don’t want to go. I have to go.”
“No you don’t.”
“You might not care about our kids.”
“Our kids are fine, it’s us you should be worried about.”
“What’s wrong with us?”
“I don’t know. You tell me. We are supposed to be on our honeymoon and all you can think about is the kids.”
“I am not a blushing bride.”
“You are to me.”
“But. . .”
“But what?”
“I, I don’t know how to be romantic.”
“We’re in Paris, the epicenter of romance.”
“I just don’t. . . not anymore.”
“Then we’re in big trouble aren’t we? For fifteen years it’s been all about the kids, which is great because I’m crazy about them, but I’m crazy about you, too, and we have to remember how to be together, just the two of us. I know the kids are what you do, and I honor you for that, because it’s the most beautiful thing to me, but the kids are going to grow up, and faster than we can imagine. And if we have done our job right they’ll leave.”
Now I realize that this dialogue is from a fictional movie and not real life, but consider how familiar this fictional dialogue sounds to a real letter a woman recently wrote to a nationally syndicated advice columnist—“I adore my husband and our two young children, but I am at a loss as to how to see my husband’s love and affection as anything other than yet another demand for my time and energy. He is loving, affectionate, kind, passionate but when he comes to give me a hug or anything along those lines (whether it’s JUST a hug, or a hopeful lead-in to something else), I think, ‘Go the hell away and take care of yourself.’ What is wrong with me? My head knows he is fabulous in every way.”
So maybe this dialogue in this made for TV movie isn’t so fictional after all! Which begs the question of how married couples, particularly those with children, get into this kind of trouble in the first place? Let me offer some thoughts based on Scripture. Too often the purpose and goal of marriage is misplaced. For some people the marriage, in and of itself, becomes the goal. Once the “I do’s” are said and the couple is pronounced man and wife, the goal has been achieved. Husband and wife tend to go off and do their own thing, having checked off their list the next thing to accomplish in their life. For some couples the goal of marriage is to have children. Once the children come they take center stage—everything that husband and wife do is for the sake of the children. But marriage, in and of itself is not the goal. And neither is having children the goal of marriage.
The goal according to Genesis 2:18-25 is companionship—a companionship that is so unique because husband and wife are joined in a relationship where they become one flesh. There is no other relationship like it. A man will leave his father and mother (relationship of child to parent) and be joined to his wife and the two will become one flesh. A husband may still honor his father and mother, but his loyalties and his priorities evolve around his wife. The same becomes true for the wife—her loyalties and priorities evolve around her husband. Their relationship, their marriage to one another trumps all other relationships by virtue of their union.
Adam grasped the importance and the priority of his relationship with Eve when God brought Eve to him. God had fashioned Eve out of one of Adam’s ribs, not so she could be a pain in his side, but so the two of them would always be together—side by side, yet one. Adam comments about their relationship: “This is now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman for she was taken out of man.” While wives today are not made out of one of the ribs of their husband’s, by virtue of our one flesh union husbands and wives can still say the same thing that Adam said. Husbands and wives are bone of each other’s bone and flesh of each other’s flesh; they are no longer two but one.
Now the Scriptures also say that a house divided against its self cannot stand. If husband and wife are not clinging to each other, not sticking to each other like glue, but going off in their own directions, because of the one flesh union they are dividing themselves. Rather than being drawn closer together they are growing apart from each other. Now Genesis also says that what God has joined together, man should not put asunder. This relationship of marriage is the will of God, his blueprint for a great marriage experience. No man or woman, husband and wife included, should be tampering with God’s design of marriage. To do so is to put the marriage at risk. To not put your marriage relationship first, but put it on the back burner to elevate the relationship of children or career or any other relationship is to risk putting your own marriage asunder.
(So much for the theology behind the institution of marriage. In my next blog we will look at some practical ways to implement this theology so that marriages are not rent asunder by children, careers, and other people. From there we will tackle some other marital issues.)
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