This year my wife and I will be celebrating twenty-four years of marriage. That is certainly a long time for two people to be living together. In certain circles, that is enough time to qualify for freak-show status. We married in our early twenties, at the time, both of us were recent college graduates. We thought of ourselves as full-fledged adults, but really, we were still just kids with very little experience of true responsibility in life. We have been through quite a lot since then, and can safely say that we have grown up together - both of us at different times tragically leaving behind our naïve, simplified and over-spiritualized views of the world - the baggage that we carried in from our church and family upbringings.

Despite all the growing pains throughout the years, I must say that the end result is all good. The churning and the chaos, the high hopes and the accomplishments, the ecstasy, the devastation, it all melds together to create a beautiful palette of what is now uniquely our own marriage. We are constantly amazed by our dysfunctional desire to be together, always. There is a unique comfort and assurance we take in knowing each other so well, having lived through so much, having seen so much in and through each other. To me, that is what all that “one flesh” stuff in the bible was talking about. It’s so much more than just the physical union of sex. It’s about the meshing together over time. The meshing together of two completely independent, unique, stubborn, empty souls into one whole, working spiritual unit. It's about the unflinching beauty of facing love head on.

It’s not always pretty, by traditional standards. But like fine art and wine, the richness appreciates with time.

I once read a book written by a marriage counselor who said that marriage is the best therapy one can ever experience for personal growth. When it came time in the book to discuss solutions for handling disagreements and conflict in a marriage, his advice was simple. One of the partners has to change. Duh. Just as simple as that. Once you get beyond the defensiveness of being right and thinking that you’re view of the world is the only reality and that this is just how you are wired and you can’t do anything about that - once you stop obsessing about all those things - just humble down and change. It’s funny, you don’t realize how self-centered and self-absorbed you are until you try to live with someone else for a long time, and work it out together. I think the professionals call this “psycho-spiritual growth.”

I remember a little segment that CNN did last year for Valentines Day. They interviewed various couples who had successful marriages that had lasted for over twenty years. In one of the interviews a gentleman was saying, “I grew in ways I never thought was even possible. My wife challenged me to see that ‘my way’ was not the only perspective in the world, and she forced me to think about things that were very difficult for me.” I can relate.

Here’s what I have learned about marriage. Because the intimacy of the relationship between two people is so intensely concentrated, it becomes a little microcosm of God’s manifestation in life: sacrifice, forgiveness, redemption, and unconditional love are all played out in the field of marriage. We can either get on board and learn how to do these things in and through our relationship, or the marriage becomes forever lost.