Mom’s Official Guide to Choosing a Mate (or, Proof that Mom Bursts Bubbles Well) - I

Dear TEAMS,

I guess it’s that time.  Without any warning or sign, you all are growing up and venturing into relationships with significant others.  It is what we have prepared for as parents personally (as we have to let you go), and what we have prayed for you, what we have wished for, and what we have equipped you for all your lives.

And it’s here.  Just like that.  In 5 days, Daddy will put A’s hand on his arm, walk her 45 feet down an aisle, and declare we are releasing her for the rest of her life into the arms of a fine young man with our blessing.  Even as I type, my eyes are tearing up.  As I have often said to you about situations like these in life, “I am happy for her, and sad for me…but the happy outweighs the sad.”

You have seen in previous posts things about dating and things about your romantic relationships.  After having many long, fruitful discussions with E about her own pursuits, I thought it was time to write down some of what I have said.  So, I’m calling this series of posts, Mom’s Official Guide to Choosing a Mate (or, Proof that Mom Bursts Bubbles Well).

Before I begin, I want to clarify that I am not perfect, and your father is not perfect, and Daddy and I don’t have a perfect marriage.  We have our own problems and continue to work on them.  But, we are committed for life to each other.  That’s the purpose of a wedding, despite what Bridezilla and Disney™ and American culture portrays.  And, given that about half of the population has faced some of the problems we have had in our marriage and decided to end their relationship over those   I say this with deep respect for those who decided to end their marriages, because the pain and betrayal and overwhelming confusion was tangible.  I validate their very real pain.  And some of them had Biblical authority to end their relationships, which is a topic for another time.  

A's Wedding Dress, awaiting the big day!

problems, I believe I have some authority in this area simply because I chose to stay and continue to choose to stay.

But, I just want you to understand that when you are wishing us well on our 70^th anniversary, it was not some random accident or that we were “highly compatible” or that we're just really nice people that we ended up that way.  It was because we chose to stay, pure and simple.  We chose the institution of marriage over ourselves, which was hard when injustice at the hand of the other was occurring and we had no guarantee—save our faith that God wanted the best for us in life and for our marriage—that it wouldn’t remain as draining as it was.  I have counseled women who have left their husbands because that man didn’t pay attention to their needs (which is tragic and unBiblical) and have yet to hear a good answer when I ask them, If you didn’t mean what you said on your wedding day, why didn’t you just live together?  Because the answer to that negates the reason they choose divorce over staying and making it work.

I caution you that what you are about to read is going to sound as about “unfun” as it gets.  The temptation will be to attribute what I am saying to some Puritan or ascetic viewpoint on marriage.  I am not saying anything of the sort.  Any one of the three circles I will mention provides so much life, satisfaction, and enjoyment, it is hard to limit them by mere words.  My purpose is to provide some practical advice to you as you approach a lifelong relationship.  I will use text from this series in the near future in my letters to you, I am sure.

So, here is my version of Marriage 101.  Move over, Cinderella, because your fairy godmother needed to give you more than a dress...

Love,

Pre-Premarital Expectations—A Checklist

Dear TEAMS,

In my last post, I talked with you about what quality premarital counseling is and why it should be pursued.  An excellent book about this is Called Together, by Steve and Mary Prokopchak.  It will do far more than a simple checklist of things to talk about ever could, and is an excellent premarital counseling curriculum.

Before you even commit to marriage, though, let me give you a list of things you should talk to your Beloved about.  Talk about this with each of you answering and understand fully what each other’s expectations are.  There are no right answers to these questions, just right understanding of what the other person thinks.  And I say this with sober love and respect for your feelings:  if you cannot come to some agreeable solution to most of these when your expectations differ, you should probably re-evaluate whether or not you should marry.  Marriage is as much a business proposition as it is a love relationship, as terribly unromantic as that sounds.

Also, you will notice that none of my questions are about squeezing the toothpaste in the middle of the tube vs. the end, or if the toilet paper gets put on the roll with the end over the top or under the bottom.  Those are issues that are in the “black olives” category.  These are basic, common sense things that expectations should match on (or be in the same ballpark).  And, these need to be answered honestly by each person—not saying what one thinks the other wants to hear.

Love,

Household – Before Kids

Who do you feel should do the grocery shopping?

Who will do the laundry?  Should the laundry be put away right away?

Who should vacuum and dust?

Who should do the deep cleaning on a seasonal basis?

Who should wash the dishes/load the dishwasher?

Who should take out the garbage?  How soon should it be taken out when its full?

Who should get the garbage to the curb every week?

Household – After Kids

All the same questions

Financial

Who should make the most money in the family?

Do you want to own a house right away, or wait?

How much money do you save every paycheck?

What is your ideal vacation and what do you want to spend on it?

Who do you think should pay the bills and manage the accounts every month?

Do you feel the wife should work outside the home?

If the wife doesn’t work outside the home, how much is she allowed to spend on non-household expenses?

Financial—After Kids

All the same questions.

Relational

How much time do you want to spend with your family after marriage?  One time per week?  Once per month?  If out of town, how much do you want to visit family every year?  (NOTE:  since all of you will live in the 5 houses around ours, it’s okay if you want to visit your spouse’s family frequently. ;)  )

What do you want to do with your day off?

How much “alone time” do you want to have every week?

How much time do you want to spend on your hobbies every week?

Do you want to go to bed together every night of the week?

What is your “ideal” evening after work?

Do you like to talk more or listen more?

Do you feel I talk too much?

Personal

Do you have a relationship with God through Jesus Christ that fills you and that you ultimately rely on daily to cope with life’s circumstances?

Is attending church important to you?

Is meeting with other people who believe spiritually like you do important to you?

What makes you feel closest to God?

How important is exercise to you?

What annoys you?

How important is staying healthy to you?

What is one bad habit you have that you don’t care that you have?

What do you do when you are frustrated?

Is yelling when you are angry acceptable to you?

Is getting physical when you are angry acceptable to you?

How do you feel about going to work every day?

What are your dreams for 20 years from now?

What are you the most afraid of?

Do you struggle with pornography or other hidden addictions?

Children

Do you want to have children?

How many children do you want to have?

Do you feel the wife should stay home with the children?

Do you want to homeschool the children?

What annoys you about children?

How do you feel about adoption?

What is the best way to discipline a child?

Which is better when a child is acting out: controlling a child’s behavior, or addressing the heart need of the child, even if the behavior doesn’t disappear immediately?

Marriage

Is there ever any time divorce is allowed? 

What would I have to do to make you divorce me?

Do you respect women who do not leave their husbands when abuse is occurring?

Do you respect men who abuse their wives?

What do you think a wife is?

What do you think a husband is?

How do you define marriage?

Would you go to marriage counseling if I asked you to, and would you participate willingly?

Two things I expect my spouse never to do are:

Two things I always expect my spouse to do are:

The Case for Premarital Counseling

Dear TEAMS,

I had the sad event a couple weeks back to hear that a sweet friend of mine was struggling with circumstances in her marriage.  It was such a tragic thing to me, really, in that I attended that wedding several years ago and everyone seemed so very happy and supportive of the union.  We all rejoiced that she was getting married—a true desire of her heart—and that she had found someone who had such similar tastes and passions as she and came from a pastoral family.

What made me saddest of all is that when I was informed of this, I wasn’t surprised.  I’d seen this coming and had hoped against hope the pattern wouldn’t be repeated yet again…not with her of all people!

The culprit that tipped me off?  They both had rejected quality premarital counseling when they got engaged for a number of reasons, not the least of which was pride.

When I speak of quality premarital counseling, I’m not talking about 3 sessions the pastor spends with the couple talking about love, divorce, and the Bible and then the third session is planning the wedding.  No, I’m talking about the down-and-dirty, practical stuff that most couples who are still in the airy-fairy stage of their relationship have not considered could ever be an issue.  Because make no mistake:  the garbage still needs to be taken out whether you are into each other or not.

It is said that most marital difficulties are the result of children, finances or sex.  It has been my experience with your father that all of our difficulties instead have been because expectations were not met (and because of lack of humility—but that’s for another post!).  Sometimes, we didn’t even realize we expected what we did…and that’s where quality premarital counseling comes in.  Quality premarital counseling involves the process of discovering where your expectations lie and where your partner’s expectations lie, and if those two conflict with each other enough to cause frustration or anger.  A highly generalized example would be children:  if you expect to have children, but your partner really doesn’t want to, that’s a problem because one of you will not get what you expect.  And worse, if the person who doesn’t want to have children decides later on that he/she should for the sake of the spouse…it sets up lots of difficulty when said child arrives on the scene and that person who “gave in” realizes the amount of self-sacrifice , time, money, and effort that child takes.

When someone says they don’t need premarital counseling because “they love their fiancé/e and know they always will, so everything will work out” and that “we’ve seen really good marriages and think we have a handle on those work,”  I quietly bite my tongue, because 1) they make a mockery of what God’s infinite love is by equating it to their own, and 2) they are making an assumption that watching is the same as doing, as if watching a lifetime of neurosurgeries would qualify you to perform one.  To think that a human being’s love is enough to ”make things work out” when 2 of the kids individually simultaneously vomit and get diarrhea that explodes out of their diaper, all while another child is panicked because he can’t find his shoe and the dog is whining at the door to go out, and your spouse has had a horrific day and can’t stand coming home to no dinner and the house mess from tending to sick kids all day and you cannot wipe your nose that is literally dripping on the carpet from your allergies…well, let’s just say that you’ll see how far human love really goes and how no amount of watching has prepared you.  You will also see how valuable the conflict resolution part of your premarital counseling was.

My friend is now in a marriage that she has had to lay down all of her dreams of having children, dreams of how she would spend time with her husband building relationship in specific ways, and dreams of vocational pursuits that might never come true, all so that she can Biblically show her husband an example of submissive love.  For now and what appears to be the next several years, that is her lot in life.  Can God change all this and do the impossible?  Absolutely, and I pray that He will.  Will God be redeeming this situation and growing her even deeper in her relationship with Him through it?  Hallelujah, yes—much to her credit of deciding to accept her situation and apply Biblical wisdom to it.  But her wide-open eyes could have been opened earlier and perhaps different decisions been made, all for the want of a little quality premarital counseling that was shunned by two prideful hearts that believed they knew what they were doing even though they’d never done it, and that their love was equal to God’s and could fix anything.

Love, 

Note to a Grieving Mother

Dear TEAMS,

It has been a sad year for me, with my mother’s health failing and the tragedy of our church member being murdered.  I also have friends right now who aren’t dealing with death of a loved one in as much the death of a dream:  the friend whose grandson is being kept from her by a resentful, unwell woman; the numerous friends with health challenges impacting their quality of life; and a friend still processing the loss of an infant son.

As with all unpleasant things, God is in the midst, redeeming it all.  We humans keep Him so busy, and yet He is crazy in love with us still.  I have found that my own darkness has opened up an empathy within me that I wasn’t aware I could have any deeper.

The last woman in my list above and I were talking recently and she was praising God for His goodness and telling that she intellectually knew that her son was in the happiest of all places and she would see him again, but “to be honest, I long for my son.”

I responded to her the best I could.  I thought someday you might want to use this to comfort another, or it will be for your own comfort.  However, I want you to be sure to understand that I have been walking through this with this woman for two years now, and that I was not offering this as a platitude or explanation for her son’s death.  Too many times, people want to “fix” grieving people and think it happens all at once.  I have found that understanding silence is more of a comfort than the smartest of sentences.  Because I had this trust with her, I could say the following and she knew my heart:

I don't think it's wrong to feel the way you do, nor do I think God thinks it’s wrong. Think about all of His children that pass away every day and go to eternal separation without Him. How He must long to have them with Him, but they will be separated from Him for eternity! I think you are simply feeling a glimmer of the Father's broken heart towards the billions who have chosen not to restore their relationship with Him. He knit them together in their mother's womb, He protected them while growing there, He made plans for their lives and desired to show them beautiful, wonderful things. He set His destiny on them, but they kept turning away. Each day, every day, He longed to hold them in His arms at last...and they chose to leave. Each day, every day, He sent His precious Holy Spirit to niggle them and draw them to Him. He was faithful and longing. And even when they drew their last breath, He hoped and believed they would utter His name...and they didn't.

(Your son) didn't choose to leave you, and he loves you and knew your love in his inner man. But your daily longing to see him one more time, to hold him, to watch and see what he would become...that grief is definitely something our Father knows, because He has experienced it manifold times. Seeing your situation next to His, I hope this will help you feel just that much more deeply how tremendously your Father loves you, identifies with you, and saves every tear you cry in a bottle. And you tasting what He suffers, but seeing He is not overwhelmed by it, can help you to know that joy is possible through Him, in time. 

Love,

Image credit:  © Wilfred Stanley Sussenbach | Dreamstime.com