What Would You Say If You Wrote a Marriage Book?

Two new marriage books written by popular male pastors and their wives are getting a lot of attention in Christian circles:  Tim and Kathy Keller have written The Meaning of Marriage.  Mark and Grace Driscoll have written Real Marriage.  I haven’t read either book but here are two reviews:  Driscoll review here.  Keller review here.

My favorite part – from the reviews – is Driscoll’s description of wives as crystal goblets and husbands as thermoses.  I don’t really have a comment on that.

But it got me wondering:  if we – ordinary married folks or formerly married folks –  were writing a book about marriage with advice for people considering marriage or wanting help with their marriage, what would we say?

I honestly can’t come up with anything comparable for the goblet/thermos analogy.  I’ve been married for almost 25 years and I have no wisdom except for all the wisdom you’ve heard before:

• Marriage is not about satisfying our own personal needs and goals.  It’s about partnering with a person to build a life and putting that person’s needs first – if we can possibly do this.  We are selfish human beings.
• We will never be able to read each other’s minds.  Yes, we might finish each other’s sentences, but we will never fully know this other person.
• Marriage involves seasons because life involves seasons.
• It’s really fun to grow old with somebody wonderful.
• We have no idea what the future holds.  It makes me nervous with an engaged couple tells me their “plan” which sometimes goes like this:  “In 2.5 years we will have a daughter.  And then we’ll have a son 3 years later.  We plan to move from our condo into a larger home in the burbs in 4.2 years. And then . . .”  In the first five years of marriage, my parents both died, I gave birth three times and also had two miscarriages, we moved twice, and between the two of us we  changed jobs three times.  In five years.  So good luck with The Plan.
• A sense of humor is really helpful.
• Enjoying each other’s company is even more helpful.
• Working on communication is a lifelong responsibility.
• Be faithful to each other.
• Acknowledge that a happy marriage for life is an underrated miracle.  And thank God if you have been blessed with this miracle.

So, what would you say if you wrote a book on marriage?  Everybody’s doing it.