Problematic Priorities
There’s another underlying issue we need to address here: what if a husband is so consumed by recreation that he loses his heart for eternal priorities? I can imagine some wives asking me, “We’re called to seek first the kingdom of God — and I have to go to a NAS-CAR race?” Or, “I’m praying for the salvation of my city — but I’m supposed to put that on the sideline because my husband is obsessed with whether the Red Sox can beat the Yankees again?”
God tends to be far more patient than we are. He waited centuries for just the right time to send his Son to earth. And then Jesus spent thirty years doing menial tasks before he launched his public ministry. By engaging in common interests with your husband, you’re winning his heart so that you can influence his soul.
I have found that authentic spiritual passion is contagious. A close friend of mine serves as a missionary to Japan, and his worldwide concern for the lost inspires me. We’ll go golfing together, and as we pray before we have our lunch afterward, I listen to him pour out his heart to God for the person we played with that day, even though we’ll likely never see that man again. Being around him reminds me of God’s passionate concern for unbelievers.
The same principle can work for you and your husband. The best way for you to stimulate his spiritual concern is by living out your own. Paul used this model in his own ministry. He told the Corinthians, “Therefore I urge you to imitate me” (1 Corinthians 4:16). In case they didn’t get it, he repeated himself seven chapters later: “Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ” (11:1). To the Galatians, Paul gives essentially the same advice: “I plead with you, brothers, become like me” (Galatians 4:12).
But before Paul could
say
this, he had to
live
this.
Take a deep breath, enter your husband’s world, and trust God to use your example in a way that will challenge your husband’s heart. The apostle Peter urges, “Wives, in the same way be submissive to your husbands so that, if any of them do not believe the word, they may be won over without words by the behavior of their wives, when they see the purity and reverence of your lives” (1 Peter 3:1 – 2).
Besides, where better to meet the people who most need God’s love than by occasionally going to a NASCAR race or a professional baseball game? Also remember that you’re going to compromise your message of reconciliation if your own marriage blows up. By staying fully engaged in your marriage, you’re creating a more solid base for spreading God’s kingdom — even though doing so may require some activities that seem frivolous to you.
Lessons Learned
Most divorces or affairs don’t occur as the result of one big decision; far more often, they take place after a series of mini-separations that lead to the final, permanent destruction of the relationship.
Diana unwittingly began separating from Ken when she put work ahead of her husband. She then made another choice toward emotional distance when she allowed the hurt she felt over her daughter to entirely extinguish her marriage’s sexual intimacy.
Ken made numerous mini-decisions himself. He chose to enter a chat room. He chose to keep writing to the same woman. He chose to exchange a photograph. And then he chose to make plans to get together.
Diana and Ken teach us that we endanger our marriage when we put it on the shelf — even if only for a season — and then expect our spouse to put up with our temporary separation. Few people in our culture willingly endure loneliness, and we no longer live in small villages. With the Internet, cell phones, and air travel, the world is literally at our fingertips. Whatever causes us to ignore our spouse — work, a sick mother or father, a troubled child, a busy church, a growing ministry — makes little difference to the neglected spouse. If they feel ignored, they become achingly vulnerable. One Internet chat, one long lunch at work, one phone call from an old high school girlfriend, one chance meeting at a sporting event or a business convention, and suddenly they see an “instant cure” for their loneliness — a cure that has the potential to destroy your marriage.
We grow together by degrees
,
and we grow apart by degrees
.
Diana realized that if NASCAR was so important to her husband, it must become more important to her. And Ken must realize that as Diana attends some of his races, so he needs to take her to the movies now and then. Of course, our primary interests and efforts should center on the kingdom of God — but we’re talking about recreational times. When a marriage loses its shared interests, it becomes utilitarian — and most people will not stay in a marriage that has lost its emotional core.
Finally, we need to understand that marriage provides the foundation for our relational lives. Work is important. Parenting is crucial. Hobbies are healthy. But when work or hobbies or even parenting causes us to neglect our marriage, the whole house may fall down — and often work, parenting, and everything else will come down with it.
Here’s a helpful “Ken and Diana” exercise: Look at the little decisions you’ve made over the past six months. Are you consciously growing toward your husband or away from him? Are the two of you building areas of shared interest, or are you slowly and unintentionally cultivating separate lives?
We have to be realistic — my wife is
never
going to run a marathon with me — but we also have to be intentional. The two of us take walks together all the time. You may not be able to share every interest with your husband, but you must cultivate several others.
A New Start
Two months after the lid got blown off his Internet affair, Ken finally could tell Diana he loved her. In July 2003, the couple took a twentieth-anniversary trip to Vancouver and Victoria, British Columbia, to see the sights — and the whales. They toured Butchart Gardens, had high tea with “the
best
strawberry preserves,” drove up the coast and saw the tide pools, and overall had a “wonderful, really good time.”
Throughout the trip, Diana marveled that she still had an intact marriage. Twelve months before, the thought of her and Ken celebrating two decades of matrimony seemed far from a done deal.
“In fact, it was kind of weird,” she admits. “We were having such a good time that our problems felt like they had taken place ages ago; but then at other times, I’d be reminded that everything happened months, not years, ago. But mostly, I kept saying, ‘Wow,’ because God really
has
made us even stronger than we were before.”
God also has begun using their healing to reach out to others. “We’ve been able to share our testimony, and that’s been a really neat thing. It really is a remarkable story when you think about it. If I had to produce the recipe for our healing, I’d say it all came down to God’s grace and our obedience.”
Hillary has never found out about the “incident.” She recently took a college course in psychology and made Diana smile when she talked about how unusual it was that her two parents “never had the types of problems you usually see in middle age.”
“Listen, the last thing Hillary needs right now is something else to feel insecure about,” Diana explains. “I’m relieved she hasn’t had to carry this burden.”
But at times Ken and Diana have shared their story discreetly, in ways that have helped other couples face similar crises. One young couple recently disclosed their struggle with Internet pornography. Since Ken’s struggle included the Internet, he could confess some of his own temptations and the things that God had shown him.
As Ken reached out to this hurting, repentant man, he could offer more than sympathy or prayer; he provided practical help that was gained from experience. He talked about how he keeps the words of 1 Corinthi ans 10:13 taped to his computer and about how he’s reorganized his office so that visitors can readily view the computer screen the moment they walk into his office.
Diana ministered to the man’s wife. Because this young wife had heard Diana’s story, she knew that Diana could understand her pain and help her to confront the question most wives in such a situation fear the most: “How do you ever trust again?”
Though Ken seemed to put the affair out of his mind quite readily, Diana has struggled to do so. “It’s hard; even though this incident happened three years ago, sometimes the old suspicions still creep up, and I find I have to put my trust in God anew. Maybe I won’t ever completely trust Ken again, but I trust God, including firmly believing that if Ken makes some bad choices, God will take care of me. Even Ken recognizes that it may never be the same.”
Diana is thankful that Ken patiently accepts her need to occasionally talk about the situation. “He understands that he made a huge mistake and that we will deal with it, at some level, for the rest of our lives.”
But Romans 8:28 – 29 — “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son” — has proven true in their lives. Diana and Ken are stronger and wiser today and more like Christ. Their family remains together, and they provide hope and healing for other couples who, in the midst of their process of reconciliation, wonder how they will ever make it.
“It was
so
totally God,” Diana says today. “I was very hurt and very disillusioned, but we’re still together, stronger than ever. God is soooo good.”
*
To protect their daughter, Ken and Diana have used assumed names; other identifying details have been changed as well.
Chapter 16: John and Catherine:
Finding Faith
Influencing a Nonbelieving or
Spiritually Immature Husband
A
bout four hundred years ago, when Elizabeth married John, she created a love story for the ages. John’s full name was John Bunyan; he eventually wrote
Pilgrim’s Progress
, one of the most influ-ential books ever published on the topic of the Christian life. John (a widower) already had four children; Elizabeth became pregnant with their first child just months after exchanging vows.
John passionately preached the gospel during a time when the state church regulated the faith like a professional poker player counts cards. Since the church didn’t license John, it was technically illegal for him to preach; but rather than accept such a prohibition, John freely and publicly proclaimed God’s truth — and promptly went to jail.
He and Elizabeth had been married for less than six months.
1
In the seventeenth century, if your husband got sent to jail, you didn’t have the luxury of simply visiting him once a week and forgetting about him. Family members had the sole responsibility to supply prisoners with food, clothing, laundry ser vices, and everything else.
So get this: married less than six months, the
pregnant
Elizabeth had to care for four children from John’s previous marriage, as well as regularly travel to the jail to keep her new husband alive.
Some ungodly husbands can’t seem to stay sober. Some can’t stay out of a casino or the bowling alley or off a golf course. But John Bunyan — man of God — proved unable to stay out of jail. As soon as he got out, he started illegally preaching again, only to receive another visit from the church authorities and another no-expenses-paid trip right back to prison.
In fact, John’s zeal for preaching meant that during the first twenty years of his marriage to Elizabeth, the couple lived together for less than
three
years. During those seventeen years of incarceration, Elizabeth had to raise the children on her own, earn the family’s income, and supply her husband with the necessities of life.
George and Karen Grant describe Elizabeth this way: “Tempered by suffering and privation, bolstered by persecution and stigmatization, and motivated by faith and devotion, she was a voice of encouragement, comfort, and inspiration to her husband. Their marriage was marked by the strong bonds of covenantal friendship as well as the emotional bonds of love.”
2
Love Hurts
I chose to begin this chapter — on loving a spiritually immature man — with the love story of Elizabeth and John to give you some perspective. I can imagine the hurt you must feel if you can’t share your spiritual journey with your “lukewarm” or nonbelieving husband. Of course, you experience a sense of loss when you lack the intimacy inherent in pursuing God as part of a couple. But don’t overestimate how “easy” two mature Christians might have it! Faith can be a risky business, with its own set of sacrifices.
Whether your husband is spiritually mature, immature, or in between, your heavenly Father likely will call you to love him and to sacrifice on his behalf. Whether you feel frustrated by his apathy or burdened by his zeal, in the end it all comes down to the same thing: marriage is about sacrifice.
We sometimes forget how radical Jesus’ words are, but consider this passage in the context of marriage:
If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even
“sinners” love those who love them. And if you do good to those who
are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even “sinners” do that.
And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what
credit is that to you? Even “sinners” lend to “sinners,” expecting to
be repaid in full. But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend
to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward
will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, because he is
kind to the ungrateful and wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father
is merciful.