In January, Angel and I celebrated 20 years of marriage. If you’ve been a reader of this blog for a while, you know what a miracle that is (you can read a series of blogs on God’s rescue of our marriage here). It is a gift to be able to celebrate his goodness and faithfulness.
Angel and I met in high school. She was a freshman, and I was a junior. She set her sights on me. I was oblivious… until I wasn’t.
After a long-distance courtship, we married at the tender ages of 21 and 19. I often tell young couples I walk through pre-marital counseling with that marrying early comes with unique gifts and unique challenges. There are gifts of getting married young. Those include the blessing of a long history with someone, protection from certain sexual temptations, and leaning into responsibility earlier than most.
Data reminds us of the challenges. Divorce rates drop significantly if you wait to be married until after you are 25.[i] Those married before 20 years of age (like Angel) have a 32% chance of being divorced within five years. That rate is slashed in half (15%) if one waits until 25 years old. The reason for this isn’t a surprise: between 15-25, most of us change pretty dramatically, often multiple times. We navigate the road to discovering who we are and what our faith commitments are. On top of that are the typical financial struggles.
Angel and I felt all the pain of these challenges. When we got married, Angel was working on her undergraduate degree in elementary education. Our plan was for her to graduate and then work as a teacher and put me through seminary. God had different plans.
We got pregnant two years after we were married and within weeks of Angel beginning her student-teaching. She had to navigate the stress of student teaching alongside the challenges of the first trimester of her first pregnancy. When we moved across the country so that I could go to seminary, she decided to stay home for the first year with Camille and then decided to go to grad school herself. In her twenties, Angel was a student, a mom, a photographer, a retail employee, and a counselor. Angel’s journey of self-discovery was hard on both of us in different ways.
Meanwhile, the dream of what it looked like to be married to a pastor tarnished quickly for Angel once I dove into pastoral ministry after seminary. My pastoral responsibilities swallowed me whole as I threw myself into my vocational calling. The never-ending demands of ministry drowned out Angel’s voice and I did not care for her or protect her well. My neglect had serious consequences.
What followed were the three worst years of our marriage. Angel grew bitter toward God and me and had a series of affairs (you can read more about this story through a series of posts that begins here). Ultimately, God rescued Angel. She confessed, I resigned as pastor to walk through the hard work of restoring our marriage, and God did far more than just repair our marriage; he gave us a marriage we never had to begin with.
After the first couple of years of our marriage, my hopes for a happy marriage shriveled. In the depths of Angel’s bitterness toward me, I thought that decades of icy cohabitation likely awaited us.
By the grace of God, so much more awaited. We are still two sinners in union, who sin plenty against one another, but I genuinely had no idea that marriage could be this joyful and fun. God brought repentance, forgiveness, and transformation. He transformed our hearts toward him and our love for one another.
Here are the foundational truths that we have learned the hard way in our marriage.
Seek God on your own.
The spiritual temperature of your marriage will always be set to the coolest person in the relationship. You have to passionately pursue Christ on your own, seeking out his presence and his Word. Don’t think that you can draft off your spouse’s spiritual life. The Spirit of God has to do a daily and individual work in both of your hearts.
Pray and read the Bible together.
That doesn’t mean that a shared spiritual life isn’t important. It is vital. Start your day and end your day in prayer together. Read the Bible together. Share your thoughts about God and invite one another into one another’s spiritual lives. Allow the sparks of your individual spiritual lives to re-ignite your hearts.
Forgive.
Marriage is the union of two sinners saved by grace. Marriage is also an opportunity for the sanctifying work of the Spirit of God. There are few things more difficult than having to live day-in-day-out with someone else’s sin and with the consequences of your own sin in your face. The invitation to forgive “seventy times seven” sounds great in theory. It’s a whole different matter when you’re the one having to forgive the same sins again and again, day after day. But is there anything that could draw us closer to the heart of God than learning to forgive as Christ has forgiven?
A friend of mine calls marriage “wedded blisters.” It’s true. We learn the heart of Christ not just through the bliss of marriage, but also through the blisters. Both are beautiful.
Walk through every emotion together without the pressure to fix your spouse.
We can’t fix circumstances and we certainly can’t fix our spouse. Only God can protect our marriages and transform us and our spouses. We are called to walk with one another in anger, sadness, bitterness, doubt, and worry (I am sure you can add to the list). Shared intimacy grows deeper in the midst of hurt and conflict. It is a gift to know I can express my heart to my bride’s listening ear and prayerful spirit. I know it is also a gift to her to know that I trust her with all of me. It’s the Spirit’s job to do the rest.
There are no seasons for priorities.
When the demands of pastoral ministry hit, I convinced myself that I could prioritize ministry over Angel “for a season.” I would emerge from the other side, life would get calmer, and then I could pour time and energy into Angel. It was a lie. There are no seasons for priorities. Christ is your priority. Then your spouse. Then your children. Those don’t shuffle around in different seasons. To get these out of order will cause harm.
Laugh.
Don’t take yourselves too seriously. Learn to laugh. Joke with one another. Not biting or passive-aggressive joking, but silly, light-hearted joking. There is no substitute for enjoying one another in marriage and that enjoyment has to be worked for in every season.
What a hard and beautiful gift God has given us in marriage. What an incredible gift God has given to me in Angel. May twenty years just be the beginning of our journey. And may God be praised in our love for one another.
I would love to hear from you what the hardest won truths about marriage you’ve learned are.
For more on our marriage story series, see:
Part 1: Our Story: The Start
Part 2: Our Story: Foxes Loosed
Part 3: Our Story: Confession
Part 4: Our Story: Restoration
[i] https://ifstudies.org/blog/want-to-avoid-divorce-wait-to-get-married-but-not-too-long/