In the same way, husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.”
Ephesians 5:28-31
For someone who had often felt jealousy at the announcement of ‘yet another engagement,’ finally posting a ringed finger on Instagram felt triumphant. I savoured my – ahem, our – moment in the spotlight: the bing! of likes and well-wishes, the excitement of my family… and, if I’m very honest, the messages from others asking for advice. “Don’t worry,” I said, as others had told me, “your turn will come.” I remember driving to collect my fiancé (how that term thrilled me!), thinking that I couldn’t imagine how couples ran into trouble. God had brought us together, and it all felt so perfect.
Romance is exciting, especially when you’ve waited a long time, but God’s desire is for us to have deep partnerships.
I tried to brush off the niggling sense that I was being smug and overly confident about a relationship that had only been four months in duration, mostly across an ocean and seven time zones. I pushed those thoughts aside and got into the serious wedding planning. Planning the marriage, however, was less captivating. I earnestly dug into Tim Keller’s The Meaning of Marriage but lost interest a couple of chapters in. It was fine, I reasoned. I could read it after the wedding. We were blissfully in love: our biggest disagreement had been about coffee!
When we are happily picking out flowers and tuxedos, we don’t expect that sooner or later we may encounter a Very Hard Thing. It could be job loss, financial hardships, mental illness, isolation, cancer, or any number of other Very Hard Things… but sooner or later we will likely be affected. It’s very tempting to assume that love will sustain you in the hard times, but the reality is more complicated. Pain and suffering can bring people closer together, but when times are hard, it is all too easy to lash out at our partner, or isolate ourselves, or get busy with trying to solve the problems ourselves and ignore our relationship altogether. I wonder if Christians might be even more susceptible than most people—when we are newly in love and certain that God has prepared this person for us, it’s even harder to envision a future where the world’s stresses harm our union.
It’s very tempting to assume that love will sustain you in the hard times, but the reality is more complicated.
I failed to realise in the lead-up to being a wife what is really required to be a healthy partner, fit for building a healthy relationship, as the verses in Ephesians describe. We all know feelings of self-neglect and even self-hatred at times… and we certainly do not always nourish or cherish our own hearts, minds or flesh. Our society convinces us that coupling up will end in ‘happily ever after’. But Paul’s letter to the Ephesians hints at a truth which is sobering and yet is the very rewarding “meat” of relationships: they take work. Work not only on the relationship itself through constant communication and sacrifice, but also work on our spiritual fitness. We can’t expect the conjoined ‘one flesh’ to be healthy if the two parts haven’t grown in wisdom and matured in God’s things.
Romance is exciting, especially when you’ve waited a long time, but God’s desire is for us to have deep partnerships. Facing our own shortcomings and doing the work to nourish ourselves and our relationship can feel tedious, but there is profound joy in coming through the Very Hard Things as ‘one flesh’ striving together for Godliness.
Sarah Bell, The Church of God in Vancouver
