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Random Thoughts on Fifteen Good Years of Marriage
January 1, 2002
Michael Evans
What were you doing at 11:00 p.m. on Christmas Day?
I was sitting at my computer trying to think of something to write for this month’s column. Couldn’t think of much more than the reason I wanted to get it done.
Tomorrow morning I plan to take Karla away for two nights to celebrate our fifteenth wedding anniversary. Bear with me. There is a point.
We plan to stay in a restored 19th century hotel in Decorah, our old collegiate stomping grounds and the place we first fell in love.
We plan to revisit all of our favorite spots like the exact spot at Dunnings Springs where I proposed on a beautiful February evening with a gentle snow falling.
We’ll stop by Twin Springs where we enjoyed picnics and walked together. We will reacquaint ourselves with our favorite culinary delights… fresh homemade cheese curds at Café Deluxe…outstanding thin crust pizza at Mabes, and a few other spots.
We will take a leisurely tour of the Norwegian American Museum and wonder aloud if anyone in this world really likes Lutefisk or whether peer pressure has simply deluded every cell associated with reason in the Scandinavian gene pool.
These are good days overall, but the past was also good. I love to remember aloud the early years.
We married in college and lived in married student housing where I was able simultaneously to be in the bathroom, bedroom, kitchen and living room…with some stretching. It was that tight…but not as tight as the budget.
We watched every penny closely. With an entire food budget of less than a hundred bucks a month we had to!
Fifteen years later I give thanks to God for causing me and my future wife to be enrolled in the same general chemistry class.
With confidence I assure you it was the best thing to come out of that class.
Nearly two hundred of us were in the same general lecture but that didn’t stop me from noticing her the minute she walked in.
As I humbly watch my fellow first generation home school families struggle with issues of dating, courtship, and marriage, I sympathize. I really do!
But, after I sympathize I also have to laugh a little. I can afford to. My oldest is only nine.
The reason I laugh is because my experience in this area is very limited, and entirely subjective.
The moment I laid eyes on Karla, as this cute college freshman walked into chemistry, I (the sophomore, which literally means “wise moron”) said to myself very distinctly, “She looks like the marrying type. I think I could marry her. I think I might marry her one day.”
This is completely true. A couple of weeks later I did find out her name. And the rest is history in the making.
There are some things that far exceed my understanding. For example, how is it that the pansies outside my office window were still blooming as of December 18th?
I must have the toughest pansies in Northern Madison County!
That doesn’t boggle my mind nearly as much as how a woman can be so wholly committed to such a man as I. No need to go into all my faults. I’m well aware…of at least some of them.
I love my wife dearly. She is a terrific woman. According to personality charts and conventional wisdom, however, we should be wholly incompatible. We’re not. Only sometimes.
By the grace of God our love for one another is deeper and stronger and anchored more securely than ever.
Christ has been the “third strand” that continues to hold us together. Ecclesiastes 4:12b tells us that “…a cord of three strands is not quickly torn apart.”
Double stranded marriages fall apart every day. Hundreds of thousands every year.
How many triple stranded marriages fall apart? Detailed surveys have proven again and again that the couple and family who prays together and gathers around the Word of God stays together.
Triple stranded marriages don’t happen simply because both husband and wife are Christians. Because Christians are still sinners even the crucial “third strand” can gradually be reduced to mere formality.
The couple still goes to church together perhaps, but the spiritual unity has been lost…somewhere between the second and third child perhaps…or maybe it happened after the tragedy occurred or the horrific job situation, or…[enter reason here.]
Men, do not let the pressures of life rob you of the security and joy of a “triple-stranded” marriage. Whatever it takes, get it back! For the honor of Christ whose image you bear, get it back! For the sake of this, and future generations, get it back!
Eleven years ago Karla and I bought our first (and only?) new car. It was a 1990 Taurus with 23 miles on it. Dark blue and pretty. Oh was it pretty.
I checked. Today (with the original engine and transmission) it has 168,000 miles on it. It’s our second car now and it wouldn’t be unusual to seem me using it as a ladder or a saw horse.
But in those early days I lovingly washed it by hand every week. Waxed it every month. Now, eleven years later, my desire to wax has waned.
I wonder how many marriages out there are like my ’90 Taurus. High miles. Rust. The wonder is nearly gone. The luster has dimmed.
There is very little hope for a long and happy future for my Taurus. But it’s just a car.
But a marriage! Oh! A marriage is a holy union depicting the self-same intimacy that Christ has with His Church.
It is an institution honored by God through all generations and will always be the means by which the earth will be populated and the glorious gospel of grace is transmitted to the next generation.
In other words everything is at stake! Therefore, let it be known that there is something much more important than giving the appearance of marital perfection…namely the truth.
Men, when is the last time you sat down with your wife and talked about these things?
Januarys are good times for questions like these. Ask her. I dare you. “Do we have a three-stranded marriage?” “Do you see long-standing patterns in our marriage (or me) which trouble you?” Or, simply, “So how are we doing as a couple? How are we really doing?”
Just a few simple questions, but the impact could be very positive!
And if, after talking honestly about these things, you conclude that the best years thus far are behind you, resolve not to let it be. Before God, agree in prayer not to let it be.
In the book of Revelation the Apostle John is revealing his vision from God. In Rev. Chapter Three John is speaking to the angel of the church in Sardis and the believers whose faith was weak.
While not a one-to-one correlation, Christian marriages are also firmly rooted in the realm of faith.
That’s the spirit in which I commend to you 3:2, “Wake up, and strengthen the things that remain, which were about to die; for I have not found your deeds completed in the sight of My God. So remember what you have received and heard; and keep it, and repent.”
If there have been better seasons of your marriage ask yourselves and God why that is and what can be done to restore what has been lost.
I’m done for now. Need to get a few hours of sleep tonight so I can be refreshed tomorrow for our rare time away, as well as strengthened to ask a few good questions to my own beloved wife of 15 years.
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