If a husband and wife are short with each other, snappy, impatient, if small disagreements escalate into major conflicts, if they constantly accuse and feel accused, etc., the presenting issue is never the *real* issue. In many cases, the problem is that a million small disruptions in the relationship have never been dealt with and so the whole atmosphere of the relationship becomes incendiary. At that point, one small spark can set off a massive blaze. By refusing to keep short accounts, you have sabotaged your own marriage. You’ve committed marital arson, burning your own house to the ground. As a pastor, I’ve had a front row seat to sone of these conflagrations, and they are never pretty.
It’s so crucial for married couples to deal with issues as they arise. Do not let things build up to a breaking point over the course of your marriage. In your house, if you never take the garbage out, eventually your house will be full of garbage. Every individual piece of garbage might be small but the accumulation of small pieces of garbage over the years still results in a house full of garbage. If you want to keep a clean house – a clean relationship – you have to take the garbage can out *every time* it gets full. Otherwise couples end up divorcing because “he doesn’t load the dishwasher the right way” or some other trivial matter. But it’s really not the trivial things that wrecked the relationship. As Doug Wilson would say, declutter your marriage – before it gets crushed under a land-fill worth of garbage.
This is what relationship maintenance looks like – reviewing the game tape together to see what went wrong, quickly confessing sin, repenting of sin, seeking and granting forgiveness. Without maintenance, things fall apart. What is true in the physical world is true in the social and spiritual realm.
When sins are not dealt with as they arise, they grow. If you don’t kill sin through a confession/repentance/forgiveness cycle, sin metastasizes. You grow bitter. You put the other’s wrongdoing under a microscope. You turn your spouse into the enemy.
One last piece of free advice: Taking out the garbage is usually the man’s job. Husbands, it’s your responsibility to pay close attention to the state of your marriage and to take action as soon as you notice a build up of relational trash. Too many men are oblivious and fail to pay attention to the warning signals that things are starting to go awry. Many men are better at taking care of their cars and lawnmowers than their marriages. Husbands, you are the head and leader, so take responsibility for the state of your household and get to work cleaning things up. Regular maintenance in the present can prevent catastrophe in the future.
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Most marital fights prove to be over very small matters that get blown out of proportion. One of the beautiful things about a healthy marriage is that after a while, neither spouse can even remember what most of their fights have been about. They forgive each other and forget all about it. It is crucial that couples keep ‘short accounts’ with one another. Resolve conflicts quickly. Do not let the sun go down on your anger, as Paul says in Ephesians 4. Seek forgiveness and grant forgiveness as quickly as possible. Even in the midst of your fights, try to curb your tongue, control your anger, and interpret your spouse’s words in the best possible manner. The less damage you do in the heat of the moment, the less repair work you’ll have to do later on. Make up as soon as possible, and express reconciliation to one another in a tangible way. Don’t hold grudges or let bitterness take root.
Patty Griffin’s song, “Long Ride Home,” tells the story of a widow going to her husband’s funeral, and then taking the “long ride home” all alone after she says her last good-bye to her spouse of forty years.
At the beginning of the song, the hearse and graveside are described:
Long black limousine
Shiniest car I’ve ever seen
The back seat is nice and clean
She rides as quiet as a dream
Someone dug a hole six long feet in the ground
I said goodbye to you and I threw my roses down
Ain’t nothing left at all in the end of being proud
With me riding in this car, and you flying through the clouds
The new widow then begins to reflect on the life she and her husband shared, going back to their wedding day:
One day I took your tiny hand
Put your finger in the wedding band
Your daddy gave a piece of land
We laid ourselves the best of plans
Then come the really key lines, as far as marital fights are concerned:
Forty years go by with someone laying in your bed
Forty years of things you say you wish you’d never said
How hard would it have been to say some kinder words instead
I wonder as I stare up at the sky turning red
I’ve had some time to think about you
And watch the sun sink like a stone
I’ve had some time to think about you
On the long ride home
Unless you and your spouse somehow die at the exact same time, one of the two of you is going to have to make that “long ride home.” You will bury your life partner. What regrets will you have that day? What words will wish you could take back? What insults will you wish you had never spoken? Won’t you wish that you had said some kinder words instead? How petty will all those squabbles and arguments seem when you drive home all alone?
Headlights staring at the driveway
The house is dark as it can be
I go inside and all is silent
It seems as empty as the inside of me
I’ve had some time to think about you
And watch the sun sink like a stone
I’ve had some time to think about you
On the long, on the long
Oh the long, on the long
On the long ride home
If married couples would remember to look at every dispute in light of the whole of their life together, they could better put their arguments in perspective. They would be able to attack the problem instead of each other. They would find many of things they fight about simply aren’t worth it.
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Alexander Schmemann’s book For the Life of the World (chap. 5) asks the right question: “[H]ow is marriage related to the Kingdom which is to come? How is it related to the cross, the death and resurrection of Christ?” Schmemann says, “Even to raise these questions seems impossible within the whole ‘modern’ approach to marriage.” He points to the number of “manuals on marital happiness,” among other things, as proof. He argues that we must not “visualize marriage as the concern alone of those who are being married.” Instead, we must see what each particular marriage means for the church and the cosmos. Marriage has a purpose that goes beyond the family; indeed, apart from the restorative grace of the kingdom, the family itself can become “a demonic distortion of love” (Mt. 10:36).
Schmemann goes on to point out that while, on the one hand, marriage serves as a window through which we can learn about Christ’s love for the church, the flip side of the analogy is more important. “[B]ut on the other hand, marital love has its roots, its depth, and its real fulfillment in the great mystery of Christ and his church.” While marriage is a this-worldly, pre-eschatological institution, it symbolizes, and thus in some way participates in, the realities of the world to come. Marriage is designed to be revelatory of the mystery that stands at the heart of the universe.
There is no such thing as a merely “natural marriage” from a Christian point of view. Every marriage is intended to be a supernatural relationship in which Christ and the church are shown forth. Thus, Schmemann ties marriage and family life into the kingdom in its present form: “Each family is indeed a kingdom, a little church…Behind each window there is a little world going on…This is what marriage crowns and expresses: that here is the beginning of a small kingdom which can be something like the true kingdom.” In this way, a husband and wife, so long as they are together in love, proclaim and picture God’s kingdom, and thus are a kind of king and queen to one another. They make their little familial kingdom a symbol and agent of the kingdom of God.
Schmemann points out that our popular “icon” of marriage – the youthful, newly wed couple – is flawed in certain respects. He suggests a different paradigm: “But once, in the light and warmth of an autumn afternoon, this writer saw on the bench of a public square, in a poor Parisian suburb, an old and poor couple. They were sitting hand in hand, in silence, enjoying the pale light, the last warmth of the season. In silence: all words had been said, all passion exhausted, all storms at peace. The whole life was behind – yet all of it was now present, in this silent unity of hands. Present – and ready for eternity, ripe for joy. This remains to me the vision of marriage, of its heavenly beauty.”
Finally, Schmemann views marriage as a kind of martyrdom. Marriage as God designed is a cruciform pattern of life. This is the real heart of “kingdom marriage”: “A marriage which does not constantly crucify its own selfishness and self-sufficiency, which does not ‘die to itself’ that it may point beyond itself, is not a Christian marriage. The real sin of marriage today is not adultery or lack of ‘adjustment’ or ‘mental cruelty.’ It is the idolization of the family itself, the refusal to understand marriage as directed towards the Kingdom of God…It is not the lack of respect for the family, it is the idolization of the family that breaks the modern family so easily, making divorce its almost natural shadow. It is the identification of marriage with happiness and the refusal to accept the cross in it. In a Christian marriage, in fact, three are married; and the united loyalty of the two toward the third, who is God, keeps the two in an active unity with each other as well as with God. Yet it is the presence of God which is the death of marriage as something only ‘natural.’ It is the cross of Christ that brings the self-sufficiency of nature to its end. But ‘by the cross joy (and not ‘happiness’!) entered the whole world.’ Its presence is thus the real joy of marriage.” Thus, marriage is “not always joyful, but always capable of being referred to and filled with joy.”
Schmemann is right: Marriage cannot be a self-enclosed circle. It must serve God’s mission. It must take the shape of the cross. Otherwise it becomes a self-serving idol – and idol that is all too easily crushed by its inability to deliver on its promises. Marriage only attains the fullness of joy when the union of the man and the woman is taken up into the life, ministry, and mission of God’s kingdom.
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