Not to be happy, but...
beauty_awake and I went out for dinner tonight, and while we were eating, we were discussing boys and such (heh, what else is new?), and she commented that Colin makes me really happy. Which he does, but my first reaction was, "Yeah, but that's not the most important thing."
Janna looked at me a little funny, and asked why, and it took me a minute to formulate my thoughts there.
A few weeks ago, I was having a conversation with some people about the most important trait in a future spouse, and the most common answer was that "he makes me happy". Something about that resonated the wrong way with me, like that was far too much pressure and importance put on a transitory emotion that's based primarily on circumstances, and is far too fleeting. I kind of walked away from the thoughts for a few days, though, until tonight, when the thought, "Holy, not happy," kept running through my head. I felt like I'd heard it somewhere before, but I couldn't place it throughout the rest of my conversation with Janna.
I believe that marriage is, as a covenant between God and two people, designed with two major purposes. One is to reflect Christ's relationship with the church, and to be a living embodiment of that love and relationship. The other is to reflect God's being within the completeness of a man and woman choosing to become one, and thus being a picture of the complete nature of God that encompasses both male and female attributes. Marriage is holy and sacred, and those are two of the primary reasons that God designed marriage to be the way it is.
I think that God uses marriage as a tool to make us holy in many ways, and obviously, Colin and I are just barely scratching the surface of those ways within our relationship--at six months, we're not nearly qualified to speak from experience, but from our experiences thus far, from watching other couples, and from what I know of God's purposes for marriage, there are a few things that I can begin to list.
For one thing, a husband and wife can hold each other accountable in ways that no one else can. They are privy to each other's weaknesses and struggles, and in an ideal marriage, that knowledge isn't used for leverage; it's used as a powerful tool for prayer, encouragement, and guidance. A husband and wife have incredible power over each other. They have more power in their words and actions than anyone else, and learning to control that and not use it to lash out is learning to be more godly and is a step towards holiness. There's more opportunity for the fruits of the Spirit (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self control) to be manifested in a marriage relationship than in almost any other; there's the opportunity to learn to forgive and restore a relationship when one or both parties act in a way that is damaging; there's more dependence on God; there's self-sacrifice in abundance; there's a deep need for humility... and I could go on.
Even where I am now, speaking mostly in a theoretical sense, from watching other people's relationships and experiencing the beginnings of all these traits in my own, I know how deeply important and profoundly difficult those can be. Becoming holy is not an easy thing; becoming godly is not always a pleasant ordeal. Neither one is synonymous with happiness, and yet deep, abiding joy stems out of both of those, and joy transcends happiness. Joy lasts when happiness is gone. Joy is still there when the circumstances that cause you to be happy have dissipated, and some other emotion has set in again.
So in the conversation the other week, when people were saying that the most important thing is that a future spouse make them happy, I have to disagree. I want my husband to be committed to making me holy--to know that he alone has no power to do that, but to be a tool for God to use to make me the woman that he created me to be. And that's what I want to be as a wife--I want to be a means by which God makes my husband a holy man. That's more lasting and precious than happiness, any day.
Oh, and the "holy, not happy" phrase? I googled it when I got home, and just as I thought, it wasn't something that I'd come up with (I'm definitely not that brilliant and wise).
It's the tagline from the book Sacred Marriage, by Gary Thomas. "What if God designed marriage to make us holy more than to make us happy."
I think I've read that book, but it's been a while, and I think I need to read it again.
Janna looked at me a little funny, and asked why, and it took me a minute to formulate my thoughts there.
A few weeks ago, I was having a conversation with some people about the most important trait in a future spouse, and the most common answer was that "he makes me happy". Something about that resonated the wrong way with me, like that was far too much pressure and importance put on a transitory emotion that's based primarily on circumstances, and is far too fleeting. I kind of walked away from the thoughts for a few days, though, until tonight, when the thought, "Holy, not happy," kept running through my head. I felt like I'd heard it somewhere before, but I couldn't place it throughout the rest of my conversation with Janna.
I believe that marriage is, as a covenant between God and two people, designed with two major purposes. One is to reflect Christ's relationship with the church, and to be a living embodiment of that love and relationship. The other is to reflect God's being within the completeness of a man and woman choosing to become one, and thus being a picture of the complete nature of God that encompasses both male and female attributes. Marriage is holy and sacred, and those are two of the primary reasons that God designed marriage to be the way it is.
I think that God uses marriage as a tool to make us holy in many ways, and obviously, Colin and I are just barely scratching the surface of those ways within our relationship--at six months, we're not nearly qualified to speak from experience, but from our experiences thus far, from watching other couples, and from what I know of God's purposes for marriage, there are a few things that I can begin to list.
For one thing, a husband and wife can hold each other accountable in ways that no one else can. They are privy to each other's weaknesses and struggles, and in an ideal marriage, that knowledge isn't used for leverage; it's used as a powerful tool for prayer, encouragement, and guidance. A husband and wife have incredible power over each other. They have more power in their words and actions than anyone else, and learning to control that and not use it to lash out is learning to be more godly and is a step towards holiness. There's more opportunity for the fruits of the Spirit (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self control) to be manifested in a marriage relationship than in almost any other; there's the opportunity to learn to forgive and restore a relationship when one or both parties act in a way that is damaging; there's more dependence on God; there's self-sacrifice in abundance; there's a deep need for humility... and I could go on.
Even where I am now, speaking mostly in a theoretical sense, from watching other people's relationships and experiencing the beginnings of all these traits in my own, I know how deeply important and profoundly difficult those can be. Becoming holy is not an easy thing; becoming godly is not always a pleasant ordeal. Neither one is synonymous with happiness, and yet deep, abiding joy stems out of both of those, and joy transcends happiness. Joy lasts when happiness is gone. Joy is still there when the circumstances that cause you to be happy have dissipated, and some other emotion has set in again.
So in the conversation the other week, when people were saying that the most important thing is that a future spouse make them happy, I have to disagree. I want my husband to be committed to making me holy--to know that he alone has no power to do that, but to be a tool for God to use to make me the woman that he created me to be. And that's what I want to be as a wife--I want to be a means by which God makes my husband a holy man. That's more lasting and precious than happiness, any day.
Oh, and the "holy, not happy" phrase? I googled it when I got home, and just as I thought, it wasn't something that I'd come up with (I'm definitely not that brilliant and wise).
It's the tagline from the book Sacred Marriage, by Gary Thomas. "What if God designed marriage to make us holy more than to make us happy."
I think I've read that book, but it's been a while, and I think I need to read it again.