The wife’s role | Rethinking marriage

Posted on Saturday, May 16, 2015 by Rebecca

One would think that, after all the books, articles, and blog posts that I’ve read on the topic of marriage over the years, both faith-based and secular, that I would not be brought up short by something said in passing, something that should have been obvious to me years ago, but sadly wasn’t.

It was at, of all places, a conference on the issue of sex trafficking. One of the speakers, after he was introduced, in turn introduced his wife and proudly announced that they had been married for over 11 months — and he even announced the weeks, days, and hours! He made a few other remarks that, coupled with his obvious joy and enthusiasm, let us know that he not only loved his wife very much, but deeply respected her as well. Then he offered some advice to the unmarried men: “Find a wife who will challenge you to be a better man!”

He went on to give an excellent, dynamic talk, but those introductory words, not even meant for me, hit me hard.

Then, more recently, I saw this:

If I were to die today, I don’t think my husband could say that about me — that he is a better person for having been married to me. I haven’t challenged him. That makes me really sad, and disappointed in myself.

Of course, I could come up with all sorts of excuses and reasons and justifications and explanations for why that is. I could, for example, blame some of the ridiculous books and articles I’ve read. For example, there was the one that insisted that, if my husband made a disastrously poor decision and asked for my advice in how to deal with the terrible fallout, I was to smile sweetly and submissively and lob this passive-agressive insult at him: “Oh, I’m sure you’ll make the right decision, dear!” Luckily, I’m not that passive-agressive, nor self-controlled, nor submissive. But, I read enough of that nonsense, and too much of the not-so-extreme advice that I needed to treat my husband’s ego as some fragile flower, and accept everything about him, that “challenging” him would sinful and disrespectful. In fact, even admitting that he might have room for improvement was questionable!

It’s not just the books. The truth is, I probably wouldn’t have been so taken in by the “my dear Rebecca, you will never live up to the ideal of godly womanhood because you just don’t have what it takes” messages if it weren’t for my own issues and the over-all dynamic in our marriage.

But those are all excuses and the bottom line is, I’m without excuse.

Contrary to all the nonsense out there, no husband — no matter how wonderful and godly he may be — has obtained perfection in loving his wife as Christ loves the Church, nor is he infallible and thus worthy of being submitted to without question. Nor is any grown man so weak and fragile that his wife needs to prop him up and dare not question him lest his precious ego dissolve and he crumple into a little heap on the ground — or whatever it is we wives are supposed to be afraid of happening to the poor dears if we don’t treat them with kid gloves.

There is a teaching out there that our role as “helpmeet” is to help our husband fulfill his “vision”. If I had a dollar for every wife who has told me that she would love to help her husband fulfill his vision if he just had one, or who complained that her husband’s vision seemed to be watching as much TV as possible, I could probably finance at least one woman’s vision. (I have a sneaking suspicion that far more women than men have some sort of “vision” for their lives.) But apparently we are supposed to sit around, praying and waiting for our husband to come up with his “vision”. I guess it’s supposed to hit him while he’s busy at work, while he’s commuting, or during a commercial break. Nagging doesn’t seem to help.

If we read the Bible more, we wouldn’t come up with such nonsense, nor would we be taken in by it.

I look at this differently now. There are certain things that the Bible makes clear are what God desires of all of us who want to follow Him. We can challenge — which is different from nagging — and encourage our husbands in their pursuit of God. There are things that are required of husbands. How will our husbands know if they are loving us like Christ loves the Church if we never communicate to them when they succeed and when they fall short?

All too often, we get caught up in marriage as an authority structure or hierarchical relationship. We forget that we are supposed to be “one flesh”. I think that, in many cases, those of us who are wives understand and long for intimacy (as in real intimacy, not a code word for sex) much more than our husbands do. We can either buy into the cultural notion that “guys just aren’t wired for intimacy” and treat our husbands like neanderthals or boys — or we can treat them with respect, like equals, like our other halves, and encourage them to stop fearing vulnerability, to open their hearts to real love, and to become better men. We can hold them accountable to obeying the clear commands of Scripture, and not look the other way when our husbands compromise their integrity or purity. We can challenge and encourage them to become the men God wants them to be, strong and courageous men who allow God, rather than culture, to define manhood.

After thirty years of marriage, I’m finally starting to do what I should have been doing from day one.

The problem with “purity culture” is not purity

Posted on Thursday, April 23, 2015 by Rebecca

She was raised in an ultra-conservative Christian homeschooling family, with loving but legalistic parents. Or maybe they were more protective than legalistic; as an adult, she is still trying to puzzle that out. There is no doubt in her mind that they loved her and meant well.

The circles in which they traveled, especially as she approached her teens, emphasized — among other things — purity. Although her brothers got what came across to her as somewhat of a token, “Oh, by the way, boys and men need to stay pure also”, the real targets of the “purity message” were the girls. Whether or not her parents, pastors, youth leaders, and the authors of the books and articles she read intended to teach her the following, this is what she came to believe:

Purity is defined exclusively in sexual terms. Sexual deeds make you impure. Thoughts do too, but to a much lesser extent.
The single most important and valuable thing about a girl is her purity. It is the most precious gift she can give her husband, yet it is also owed him to the extent that she is robbing him should she squander her purity on anyone else.
Boys and men have many other things that are important and valuable about them, and many other things to offer their future wives. Their purity is of lesser value, does not define their worth, and is not the most important thing about them.
The most valuable thing about a girl or woman is her sexuality. It might be the only thing of value about her, unless she marries a man who also appreciates her homemaking skills. However, even the most amazing domestic talents and abilities will never make up for being sexually impure, broken, or lacking.
Men are far more valuable than women, because they are not judged and defined solely by their sexuality.
While it’s nice if your future husband does not have a sexual past, he does not owe you his purity. You have no right to be judgmental or unforgiving of anything he might have done. His past, if he has repented of it, should no longer matter.
A girl is not only responsible for guarding her own purity, but the purity of everyone who encounters her. She needs to scrutinize her actions and appearance at all times in order to make sure she is not causing anyone to stumble.
It is impossible for boys and men to maintain purity in their thought lives. In fact, there is no such thing. Males are wired in such a way as to be on the verge of sexually explicit thoughts and desires at all times, and thus the most seemingly innocent thing can set them off. For example, if a boy sees a girl with wet hair, he cannot help imagining her naked in a shower, begging him to have sex with her.
Men and boys are incapable of respecting a girl or woman that they want to have sex with. This would seem like a problem in marriage but, while it’s important for an unmarried woman to gain the respect of men, wives supposedly no longer need respect. Only husbands do.
Men and boys are incapable of respecting a girl or woman who has lost her purity. It’s kind of debatable whether the sex act in marriage causes a woman to lose her purity or not. After all, the fact that she “gives” her purity (as the greatest gift she could possibly give) to her husband implies that she no longer possesses it. Luckily she only needs love from her husband and not respect. Marriage apparently mysteriously transforms a woman that way.
Once a girl or woman loses her purity before marriage, she is ruined forever. She can repent and be forgiven by God, but her purity is gone, never to be regained. She has robbed and cheated her husband out of the only thing of real value about her.

The young woman I am writing about is not the only one to believe these things. Not by a long shot.

I would hope that readers would see this as a problematic message. Whether or not this is the intention of the proponents of “purity culture”, it is what many young women are learning in homes, churches, youth groups, books, articles, blog posts, homeschooling conferences, etc., often with heartbreaking and disastrous consequences. One need not search very hard on the internet to find tragic story after story. Some young women who were harmed by growing up with these pervasive messages are now speaking out quite strongly against not only “purity culture” itself, but the very idea of remaining sexually pure until marriage.

The problems with “purity culture” are legion, but I will address only three of them for now:

1. It sexualizes women and girls — even very young girls — and repeats our media-saturated culture’s false message that women’s value is measured by sexuality and little or nothing else.

I mentioned the creepy sexualization of little girls when I wrote about “Purity Balls” on my old blog. In many ways, “purity culture” robs little girls of their innocence by forcing them to view themselves as sexual beings when they should be running and playing and learning — free of concerns about their future wedding nights. We should be teaching them what it means to be a follower of Jesus now, as wonderful little girls, and how they are of infinitely more value to Him, and more beloved, than they could ever imagine.

We need to tell girls and women that their worth rests in far, far more than their sexuality. The most valuable, precious gift a woman can give her husband is herself, in all her fullness and complexity. Sexuality is a part of that, yes, but I must emphasize again that her worth is in her personhood — who she is in the totality of her being, her talents and abilities, her personality and character, her knowledge and wisdom, her life experiences, her accomplishments, her relationship with God, her morals and values, her thoughts and opinions, her hopes and dreams — all that and more makes her uniquely who she is — and that’s what she brings into marriage.

Her sexuality is not a commodity that she sells in exchange for a wedding ring, or that her father sells on her behalf. Marriage is neither prostitution nor domestic service. Or at least it shouldn’t be. Any teaching or belief that even hints that it might be, or that virginity is owed as part of the transaction, is ungodly. Any boy who does not truly understand what is most precious about any woman — far, far more precious than her virginity — is not ready to be a husband…or at least not a very good one.

2. “Purity culture” has no idea what purity really is. Purity is not some treasure that girls are born with and that they need to guard desperately and fearfully until the day that they give it to their husbands. No one need weep on her wedding night, as one distraught “purity culture” young woman did, over the loss of what once defined and gave her worth.

Purity is not an intact hymen. It is not virginity. It is not a lack of sexual experience. It is not even saving your first kiss for the wedding. Purity is not a “thing” that you can give away or that someone can steal from you.

More times than I care to count, I’ve been told heartbreaking accounts of young girls being sexually abused, molested, and raped, often by people they loved and trusted. Such despicable evil perpetrated against a child damages and wounds his or her soul in a way that is indescribable.

It is all the more devastating if you believe that the most important thing about you, the precious gift you owe your future husband, has been stolen forever, obliterated and destroyed. Your body may heal. The deep wounds no one sees may heal as well. But your purity is gone forever. And, if you are a girl, so is most of your worth.

Of course that is a lie, an evil lie, from the very pit of hell itself. Unfortunately, it is one that many deeply hurting young girls have learned from “purity culture”.

Old Testament Jewish law had a lot of perplexing and burdensome commandments about cleanliness and purity. The good news is that, as followers of Jesus, we are no longer under that system of law. In Mark 7:14-23, Jesus declared all foods clean, teaching that what a person eats does not defile him or her. He was doing more than lifting the dietary law; he was teaching what makes a person defiled or impure:

Are you so lacking in understanding also? Do you not understand that whatever goes into the man from the outside cannot defile him, because it does not go into his heart…That which proceeds out of the man, that is what defiles the man. For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed the evil thoughts, fornications, thefts, murders, adulteries, deeds of coveting and wickedness, as well as deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride and foolishness. All these evil things proceed from within and defile the man.

To be very graphic, when a rapist invades the body of his victim, she may feel defiled, but she is not. He may have robbed her of her innocence, by the horrible evil he has inflicted upon her, but he has not robbed her of purity. He has defiled himself — long before he committed the sin of rape — not her.

The Bible talks about different kinds of purity: of heart, of devotion, of doctrine, and more. No one is born with pure devotion and pure doctrine, and then needs to avoid giving those forms of purity away prematurely to the wrong person. We would laugh if someone taught, “Save your doctrinal purity for your spouse, because it’s the most valuable gift you can give him or her!” No man except a lunatic would say, “Well, she started believing some really messed up stuff there for awhile, some actual heresies, and she lost her doctrinal purity. Thankfully, she repented and has seen the error of her ways but I’m sorry, I want to marry a woman who saved her doctrinal purity for me.”

I’m not making light of the fact that sexual pasts can invade the present. I firmly believe that avoiding sexual sin is a good, righteous, and important thing, but it is something that should be undertaken to obey God, not to avoid “losing the most precious thing one can give to one’s spouse”. Also, if we are going to emphasize purity, we need to emphasize true purity, in all its forms, and not just female virginity. We need to make sure those of us who are teaching purity are pursuing it as well — in our thoughts and our actions.

I would also argue that it is a sign of impurity when a father looks at his sweet, innocent little girl and becomes overly concerned about her hymen, as if it belongs to him until he turns it over — hopefully still intact — to another man. I would argue that it is a sign of impurity when a man buys his little girl a beautiful dress and takes her out to a fancy ball, the fulfillment of her sweet childish princess dreams — and then makes it all about sex. It takes a certain amount of impurity for a man to begin teaching his little girl that a fancy night out with a man always has strings attached, this time that she must promise him, “I pledge to remain sexually pure…until the day I give myself as a wedding gift to my husband…”

The lack of understanding of true purity is because of my next point.

3. “Purity culture” lacks a real understanding of the gospel.

In Isaiah 1:18, God says, “Though your sins are as scarlet, they will be white as snow.” In other words…pure as the driven snow…

In 1 Corinthians 6, we read a list of all the sorts of sinners who will not inherit the kingdom of God, followed by these words:

Such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.

That’s the part of the gospel that the “purity culture” people seem to be overlooking. When God forgives our sins, He washes them away and we become pure. We negate the work of the Cross, the tremendous sacrifice our Savior paid, when we act as if purity has some source other than Him, and when we act as if the stain of sexual sin is so deep that God’s grace is insufficient to purify it.

Many of us who grew up in the church memorized 1 John 1:9, which says, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Unfortunately, proponents of “purity culture” do not really believe that verse. If they did, more husbands would be honest in admitting, “I feel jealous and insecure because my wife had sex with other men in her past, and I’m having a hard time not holding it against her” — instead of maligning both the gospel and the character of their repentant wife by saying, “She was not pure when I married her.” To hear some men talk, one would think their wives had gone straight from working in a brothel to the wedding, without even bothering to take a shower in between. It doesn’t matter how long ago a woman’s sexual past may have been, or how fervently she pursued righteousness in the meantime, or how pure her devotion to Jesus — her husband still sees her as impure. The gospel means so little to him.

The irony is that few of these same men want a truly pure wife. What they want is a “whitewashed sepulchre”, all clean and beautiful on the outside but not so much on the inside. They want a wife who is pure in body but not necessarily in heart, a wife with a virginal body who will somehow automatically know how to fulfill her husband’s porn-driven masturbatory fantasies. Too much purity of conscience, too much innocence, too much devotion to God might get in the way of that.

As for the young woman at the beginning of this post…according to “purity culture”, she lost her purity, first because of what someone did to her against her will and then later by her own choice. After a few years living as a prodigal (I love prodigals!) she returned, not quite to the faith of her youth but to a new, more life-giving, fervent, simple yet profound, intimate faith. She eventually met a man who recognized her purity — along with many of her other wonderful qualities, including her approach to Christianity — and fell in love with her. Last I heard, they are living out their own happily ever after story, as far removed as possible from the false teachings of “purity culture”, and instead pursuing together what 2 Corinthians 11:3 refers to as “simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ”.

I weigh in about vaccines

Posted on Sunday, February 8, 2015 by Rebecca

Back in 1985, I was somewhat more educated about vaccines than the typical parent, having taken a college course on the history of virus diseases — a fascinating and hugely informative course taught by an amazing man whose many accomplishments in the field of medicine included being the head of the CDC’s virology division. So, while I was unquestioningly pro-vaccine to the point that it never dawned on me not to vaccinate, I knew there were things about virus diseases that were yet mysterious and unexplainable. For instance, the two brilliant doctors and researchers who taught my course, experts in the fields of virology and epidemiology, could not entirely explain why certain diseases had obviously been on the decline before vaccines against them were introduced, or why the polio rates in an unvaccinated populace outside the U.S. dropped at the same time and almost the same rate as the newly vaccinated U.S. population.

None of that, for a moment, caused me to question the wisdom of full vaccination against any and all diseases. In all my reading and study, nothing had made me think that vaccines were anything but entirely safe.

Then my infant son experienced syncope following his routine vaccination. I recall holding his limp, seemingly lifeless body in my arms, his breathing so shallow that I could not detect it, and screaming for the doctor, the nurse — anyone — to help. I thought my son was dead.

You don’t get over that quickly.

My son was not dead. The nurse, impatient with my state of shock, and unfamiliar with information like this, told me my son was obviously “shutting down from overstimulation” — even though he was long past the newborn stage and never reacted like that to anything else. She refused to summon the doctor and insisted that I leave immediately.

Still in shock, and not knowing what else to do, I left.

To make a long story short, my infant son — who usually slept very little during the day — remained in what I can only describe as a coma-like state for over 8 hours. I could not rouse him. Repeated calls to the doctor’s office finally resulted in my being told by the nurses that I was an overwrought new mother and should enjoy the “break from my son” for as long as it lasted, and to stop calling them. It was that day that I discovered we had a family history of “bad reactions” to the pertussis vaccine, which prompted me — once my son seemed back to normal — to head off to the UCLA Biomed Library to try to find out what on earth had happened to him.

This was before The National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act, and my son’s frightening reaction was not reported to VAERS. The CDC admits this database is incomplete, even today. How incomplete is anyone’s guess.

In the next two to three years, I read everything I could lay my hands on about vaccines. I questioned medical professionals. I attended seminars. I did all the study and research that I could.

What I discovered during my research was that my son’s reaction, while sounding trivial — oh, he just slept deeply all day — was actually considered serious because it is usually accompanied by neurological damage. Two years later, another pediatrician told me emphatically, “I cannot in good conscience give any member of your family the pertussis vaccine.”

“You might not be so lucky next time,” more than one doctor told me.

I decided to take their medical advice. Unfortunately, I foolishly mentioned this to some other mothers — and that’s when I discovered just how angry, hysterical, and irrationally selfish the radical fringe of the most extremely pro-vaccine parents can get. I discovered that the ones urging me the most vociferously to “Do some research!” had never actually done any of their own, and were totally unfamiliar with what I considered the most basic knowledge about vaccines. When one distraught woman went so far as to scream in my face that she didn’t care if all my children died from vaccines just as long as hers weren’t exposed to whooping cough, I decided this topic was too emotionally loaded to discuss rationally with some people, and it was probably best to keep my mouth shut in the future.

The current hysteria reminds me of those days, only now it seems so much more widespread and virulent. I would recommend parents, and all those concerned about measles, to read this information from the CDC. If you are going to lambaste people for their medical decisions, or clamor for the government to take draconian measures against non-vaccinators, at the very least you should acquire some basic knowledge and make sure your own vaccinations are up to date.

If you think every person who decides to forego a particular vaccine is a dangerously ignorant wacko anti-vaxxer, I would like you to know:

Some of us felt very much like you until something scary happened to one of our children
Some of us are not at all “anti-vaccine”, but carefully consider the merits of each one, weighing the risks and benefits
Some of us have done a lot of research and study in order to make the difficult decisions we have made
Some of us are following medical advice
Some of us will forego a particular vaccine for reasons that have nothing to do with autism
Some of us are so concerned about people with compromised immune systems that we do our best to prevent their exposure to people who are not only possibly ill, but might have recently received a live vaccine (and, contrary to what you may have been told, the measles vaccine in the U.S. is a live vaccine)
Some of us understand that no vaccine is 100% effective, which is why we might get argumentative when you insist your fully vaccinated — but obviously sick — child could not possibly have an illness he was vaccinated against, even if his symptoms seem glaringly obvious to everyone else. When we point this out, we aren’t on an anti-vax tear; we just don’t want your kid infecting other kids, vaccinated or not. Besides, if you’re right that the cough that sounds so alarmingly whooping-like isn’t pertussis, or that what your child is covered with is some entirely different pox, then I really don’t want to be exposed to whatever it is your kid has — so please keep him/her home, OK?
Some of us understand that not all diseases have a vaccine. We also understand that what might be a “simple cold” or “I hope it’s not the flu, haha” to one person might be quite serious to someone else. That’s why some of us might seem a bit “paranoid” about germs, or overly concerned with maintaining healthy immune systems.
We have a wide variety of reasons for choosing against one vaccine, several vaccines, or all vaccines. Don’t assume you know those reasons, or that we are all misguided, ignorant zealouts out to infect your children…after all, I try not to assume all stridently vocal pro-vaccinators are misguided, ignorant zealouts who — because they can’t be bothered to make informed decisions for their children and themselves — want to take away my right to do so.

Note: Since my youngest is almost 18, I no longer have a dog in this fight. And, frankly, that’s a relief.

Each marriage is different

Posted on Thursday, February 5, 2015 by Rebecca

These words from Gary Thomas were part of my devotions this morning:

“Different From the Rest”

Let me put a saying by nineteenth-century churchman Horace Bushnell in the language of marriage: “No married couple is ever called to be another. God has as many plans for married couples as He has couples; and, therefore, He never requires them to measure their life by any other couple.”

You comprise one-half of a unique couple. No other couple has your gifts, your weaknesses, your history, your dynamics, your children, your calling. There is great freedom in accepting our couple identity as it is: we might be strong in this area, weak in that, vulnerable here, impenetrable there, excelling in this, often failing in that, but we are a unique couple called forth by God to fulfill our unique purpose in this world.

God has established your home and your marriage, and that’s the life He wants you to live. Never look to other couples to measure your worth; look to God to fulfill your call. Don’t compare yourself with other couples to measure your happiness; compare your obedience with God’s design on your life to measure your faithfulness.

Become comfortable with your story, your identity as a couple. Relish it. Never compare it. Just be faithful to the unique vision God has given to the unique you (and that’s a plural you). God doesn’t need another couple just like one He already made. He is so much more creative than that. Rather, He wants to release and bless the unique couple that is you.

This goes along with my last post. It is encouraging and freeing not to feel the need to hold my marriage up to a standard set by anyone else, not to hold it up for comparison to other marriages, not to hold it up to what is written in marriage books. The “rules” some people apply to marriages (tasks must be arbitrarily divided along gender lines; communication must follow this format and these guidelines; wives need x,y,z while husbands need a,b,c; a good marriage requires this or that; etc.) do not apply to me — only God’s rules and standards, clearly stated in His Word apply. I can and should look to Him, to my husband, and to myself for the practical outworkings in my life and in my marriage.

That is not to say that others have nothing to offer. There is good advice out there, and it would be foolish to disregard it all. But it’s also foolish to try to shoehorn my marriage and myself into something my husband and I were never intended to fit.

Marriage requires our best. But it should not require us to become someone we are not. It’s a wonderful thing when we can accept ourselves for who we are, our spouses for who they are, and our marriages for what they are — and encourage that all live up to their full unique identities.

I was wrong about date nights

Posted on Tuesday, February 3, 2015 by Rebecca

It’s not that I was entirely wrong. I still don’t believe that couples need to leave their kids with babysitters once a week, lest their marriages be doomed. Nor do I think we should be trying to recapture the early, pre-marriage days of our relationship, when we were not only younger but far more immature and selfish, didn’t know each other as well, and hopefully — if we followed Biblical morality — weren’t having sex. Why go backwards?

However, there are some things I was seriously wrong about, and those are things that the best of the “date night” advocates are trying to get at. I’m addressing this to the wives, because…well, because I am one.

1. Intimacy is important, and it doesn’t just happen. You need to make room for it. By this, I mean real intimacy; I’m not just using the word as a code or euphemism for sex. It takes time, and a willingness to be open and vulnerable with each other, to build and maintain the level of intimacy that should be found in a truly healthy marriage. Otherwise it’s too easy to become harried co-parents passing each other like two ships in the night, whose conversations are mostly about babies and business.

2. Husbands aren’t just being immature and selfish, or child-haters, if they miss the “fun” person we used to be, or that they hoped we’d be, when we married. Unless you married a really irresponsible jerk, he doesn’t want to quit his job, sell the kids to the gypsies, and run off with you on some crazy adventure. But he might want you to play with him — however that might like look for the both of you — and to be his recreational companion once in a while. He might want to know that he can still make you laugh, that your life is not all drudgery and duty, and that there is still a fun sparkle in your eyes especially for him to enjoy. He might just want to see you happy, and to know it’s because of him.

3. Some husbands get lonely, and rely on our friendship more than we realize. This can be confusing if your husband’s friendship style is waaaaay different than yours. I was shocked to read a study showing that the majority of happily married men considered their wives their best friends, while the wives usually considered someone else their best friends. As a stay-at-home, homeschooling mom whose husband was usually busily involved in his business and in church ministry plus meeting weekly with a prayer partner for most of our marriage, it was easy for me to think my husband’s life was filled with people and rich relationships while I was isolated and starved for adult conversation. Yes, my husband was surrounded by people all day, but that did not meet his deeper needs for relationship. We would have both done things differently if we had realized that.

4. Marriage should be our priority human relationship. After all, we took vows with this dude. That doesn’t mean we sacrifice our children on the altar of marriage. We don’t have to do silly, rude things like couch time to let everyone know they are second, third, or fourth fiddle to us. It doesn’t mean we should spend more time with our husbands than our children, or that we can’t have a girls’ night out, or that we must not ever do anything without our husbands. Marriage should never be an idol. Neither should any husband. But it’s an extremely important relationship, not just because of the vows, but because it’s supposed to be a living analogy of Christ and the Church. So we better treat our marriage with respect (and the same goes for the children produced by it).

5. Marriage books are full of nonsense. But I already knew that. Of course, they are not all 100% rubbish, but we would do well to remember a few important things: a) most, if not all, of them were written by people who have never met you or your husband; b) most, if not all, of them are written by people you would never, ever want to be married to; c) authors of marriage books have their own issues and baggage just like everyone else; d) the more authoritative and dogmatic the author, the quicker you should toss his/her book on the scrap heap; e) too many marriage books are written by middle or upper class Americans who assume we all have enough discretionary income to spend on babysitters, romantic dinners, fancy lingerie, hotel weekends, and vacations without the kids; f) just as God created us all different and doesn’t want us all to look and act exactly alike, He doesn’t want all marriages to look and act exactly alike; g) marriage is first and foremost about becoming one — not erasing anyone, but becoming a whole that is greater than the individual parts — so don’t take anyone seriously who starts telling you marriage is like the military, or like a business, or like a sports team, or like any other wacky thing God never intended it to be.

6. You are neither a sinner nor a failure if you need time to relax and rejuvenate. Even Jesus withdrew for times with His Father. We need intimacy with our Heavenly Father. We need intimacy with our husbands, however that may look in each of our marriages. And we need a certain amount of intimacy with good friends. Those things are important and valuable…and we don’t need to pretend we are supermoms who are above human needs and desires. We need each other…and our husbands need us.

7. Marriages have seasons, and what works in one may not work in another. We need to cut ourselves some slack. Alone time with our husbands will not be our major priority when we have a newborn, nor should it. Going broke hiring babysitters, or stressing out over what mayhem the kids are engaging in without us, is not a marriage-building exercise, no matter what anyone tries to tell you.

8. We need to do what works for us. Even though I rejected the notion that my marriage would shrivel up and die if I didn’t jump through all the stressful, exhausting hoops a weekly date night would have required when the kids were little, I still thought we needed a weekly something. So I tried date nights at home and a bunch of other ideas I found in books or online, and they all went over like a lead balloon. In my misguided zeal, I forgot to do the most important thing. It never dawned on me to say to my husband, “Honey, I want us to have the best marriage possible, and to become closer to each other. What kind of things do you think would nurture and strengthen our marriage? And what kind of things would you enjoy doing together?”