Lord, as you have committed yourself to your church, and as your church has committed herself to You, may I, in turn, be completely committed to my bride and she to me.
“Happy families are all alike. Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” (Tolstoy)
Thus is the opening line of Anna Karenina. Tolstoy then goes on to elucidate some unhappy families. Concerning happy families, Tolstoy is largely correct. Concerning unhappy families, he is correct mainly on the externals. Happy families and unhappy families all experience a million different types of struggles, but the happy families endure them, while the unhappy families fall apart. On the outside it may look as if they fall apart in a million different ways, but in reality their reason for falling apart is not external. If it was external, then the happy families would fall apart, too.
This is how marriage is. Marriages fail because of heart issues inside one or both spouses. They do not fail because of financial hardship or personal disagreement or the kids leaving or any other external situation. External situations merely reveal what is in the heart. Thus, if you want a strong marriage, work on your heart before you work on your finances. The heart is where God focuses. In fact, sometimes He may work on your finances (or your health or your job) in order to work on your heart.
Within marriage, a heart issue of the first order is commitment. Love without commitment is not love. Paul says, “love endures.” It does not come and go. This is commitment. Commitment is what keeps a marriage together through difficult times, and when a marriage falls apart, you can be almost certain to find somewhere in the relationship a lack of commitment.
The best way to strengthen a heart of commitment is to walk with God (see previous blog). God will increase your desire to love and stay with your spouse. Beyond such a foundation, commitment reveals itself through our priorities, which means it reveals itself through our choices. Our choices both reveal our commitments and strengthen them. God intends the marriage commitment to be stronger even than our commitments to our country, our family, our job, our children, or any other earthly thing. Marriages fail when other commitments become stronger than our marriage commitment.
I have seen a wife prefer to live in Australia than to live with her husband, and he wasn’t a bad husband. I have seen husband and wife prefer their careers or a certain level of income over their marriage. I have seen a husband prefer another woman over his wife. All of these choices came from priorities, and in every case, the marriage was not the main priority.
Commitment within marriage intentionally chooses the marriage over these other issues. The wife may miss her home in Australia, but if she is committed to her husband, she stays with him, even if he does not live where she would like. The husband and wife may want successful careers, but if they must both work in different cities or continents to get ahead, one or both of them may have to forsake the successful career for the sake of the marriage. A husband may find a prettier woman or a more pleasant one, but if he is committed to his wife, he flees the other woman for the sake of his marriage. Commitment involves intentional choices that prioritize the marriage.
I am not naïve. I am not suggesting that the above situations contained only a lack of commitment. In every case, there are personal issues or communication issues or other issues, but alongside those issues somewhere is a lack of commitment, and that lack of commitment prevents people from dealing with their personal issues in a healthy way.
A wife needs to know that her husband is with her regardless of what happens. And a husband needs to know the same from his wife. When both husband and wife have complete confidence in the commitment of their spouse, they can approach their disagreements and difficulties from a position of security. She knows that this disagreement won’t make him run, and that knowledge makes her handle the disagreement in a different way. He knows that she will not let her mother get between them, and that knowledge causes him to relate to her family in a healthier way.
Commitment affects everything in a marriage. Commitment provides the greatest desire for making things right and the greatest security in difficult times.
When you enter a marriage, you make a commitment with your words. Genuine commitment simply takes your words to heart. When people initiate a divorce, they violate their word. They made a commitment with their words, but now we see that the commitment was just words. Their word doesn’t mean anything anymore.
Commitment is vital. It is what makes a marriage. Here is partly what this means in practical terms.
1. Do not enter marriage with divorce as an option. People say, “50% of all marriages end in divorce, and you can’t predict the future, so plan for the worst.” This thinking has given rise to prenuptial agreements and conversations about “what if we divorce?” These conversations take place in the name of being open and responsible. The problem is that a commitment means you are all in, but divorce means you are not all in. A prenuptial agreement is not a commitment. It shows that you have one foot in the marriage and one foot at the door. Do not enter a prenuptial agreement, and if anyone wants you to sign one, dump him or her and find someone willing to commit his or her life to you. The person who wants a prenuptial agreement is more interested in his or her assets than in being one with you. In marriage, the two become one. If you enter marriage with the option of no longer being one, then you have no understanding of what marriage is. You may be covering yourself in the event that the marriage fails, but you are also weakening the very marriage you want to succeed. It is your commitment and not your careful planning that will make your marriage work. One of the greatest beauties of marriage is the giving of all of you to another person. It is expensive and risky, but it is beautiful. The option of divorce destroys that. Do not treat divorce as an option.
2. Live apart before marriage but live together after marriage. In marriage, the two become one. Couples violate a commitment to marriage when they live in contradiction to what marriage is. If you are not married, live as two. But when you marry, you must come together. That is part of your commitment to being one. This means that the situation in which the husband lives long term in Beijing while the wife lives long term in New York must change. Either live together in Beijing or live together in New York, but let’s not have any of this nonsense in which you claim commitment to your marriage while living as if you are not married. If you commit to your marriage, live that way. Your marriage is more important than your career.
3. Have one set of finances even if you have two jobs. We’ve discussed this already. The two have become one. Do not divide the money into his money and her money. What she earns is his, and what he earns is hers. This is what being one means. Part of commitment is sharing the assets completely.
4. Listen. When you are committed to someone, you want to hear what he or she has to say. You want to understand. A marriage is a learning process. When a husband commits to a wife, he wants to love her, please her, and help her, but he can’t do any of this if he doesn’t know how. Listening helps him know how. When a wife commits to a husband, she wants to resolve conflict, but she can’t resolve anything well until she first knows why he said what he said or did what he did. Committed couples listen to one another. In order to improve listening, it may be practical to have them set aside time at least weekly to be together by themselves and talk. She can bring her topics and he can bring his. This arrangement at least lets them both know that they will deal with their issues at some point. He may come home and she wants to talk immediately, but he is not prepared. Or he may want to bring up an issue about the kids but not with the kids around. Not all times are equally good for talking, and this arrangement lets them both know that they will not sweep their issues under the carpet. They actually are scheduling a time to deal with them.
5. Little Things. When a husband commits to a wife he does these sorts of things for her: He makes her coffee in the morning. He lets her sleep in when he is able. He helps her do the dishes or make dinner. He tells her he loves her. With words. Often. He writes her love notes. He gives her hugs and kisses. He takes care of the car or repairs the sink. He buys her flowers. Or ice cream. Or takes her out for dinner. He praises her before his friends. He does a thousand little things like these that say, “I love you. I am yours.” When a woman sees this, she becomes radiant.
When a wife commits to a husband, she does these sorts of things for him: She makes him his favorite cookies just because. She lets him sleep in when she is able. She tells him she is with him, no matter what. She supports him even when she disagrees with him. She packs him a lunch. She puts on his favorite music in the car. She lets him know what is going on with the kids. She praises him before her friends. She does a thousand little things like these that say, “I love you. I am yours.” When a man sees this, he rejoices.
These little things vary with the circumstances, but when you commit yourself in marriage, you commit yourself to little things because those little things are not so little.
We could go on. Commitment entails much more than I have mentioned here. And the things I have mentioned are principles, not hard laws. For example, perhaps there are special cases in which husband and wife need to keep money separate (an unjust lawsuit against one of them or a government that takes assets from a Christian man). Or perhaps for a short time, a husband needs to move for a new job while the wife stays behind and sells a house or finishes the school year for the kids. Or perhaps there is a military deployment. Or perhaps there are those rare cases in which Jesus says divorce is allowed (Matthew 5:32). But everyone understands that these sorts of situations are either short term or special cases. You deal with them if you have to. You do not abandon your commitment in the name of special cases. If you did that, you would have a marriage like that of most Americans.
And you don’t want that.
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