The day before my wedding I purchased a brand new pair of hard contact lenses. Wore them for about 18 hours that day. No big deal, I had been wearing contact lenses for many years.  The next morning – the morning of my wedding – I awoke in a hotel room and much to my surprise, the usual act of slowly opening my eyes and letting them adjust to the light was impossible. I couldn’t open either eye. 

The skin was tight and they were tender to the touch, it felt as though someone had snuck into my room in the middle of the night, and put two undersized ping pong balls under each eyelid.  Swollen shut and painful I spent the next several hours with ice packs on both eyes. So in a somewhat comical yet prophetic moment that it would take years for me to grasp, I literally awoke on my wedding day blind – unable to look in a mirror and see myself.  

My Naive But Sincere Belief
I had no idea how important it would be for me to be able to see myself.  When I got married I had this innocent and extremely naïve belief that I had met the person who would enable my happiness and meet my needs.  That was a deeply sincere belief. As a matter of fact, I thought that is why people got married.  To have their needs met and to find happiness. 

After two or three years of increasingly painful and disappointing marriage, we finally reached out for help. We found help in the form of another couple who began to mentor and coach us, to literally show us that there was another way to do this thing called marriage.  But the first real big change did not come from learning a new communication technique or something new about our sexual intimacy.  The beginning of real change happened when our new mentors began to unpack God’s purpose of marriage.  As I began to understand the why questions marriage, it became much easier to embrace the how questions.

Happiness vs. Holiness
There is a book called Sacred Marriage written by Gary Thomas. The premise of the book is stated in this one question: “What if marriage was more about your holiness than your happiness?”

That question rocked my world.  Marriage taught me about the gravitational pull of self, the pervasive power of selfishness much faster than I could have ever imagined.  I wasn’t happy, Anne wasn’t happy.  It was as if the swelling in my eyes really had never gone away.  I simply could not see my part in this pain.  But in my pain, I began to ponder the question, “What if my marriage was more about my holiness than my happiness?”

What do you think of this idea?  Is marriage really more about your holiness than your happiness?  Do you agree with that idea?  Does the question encourage you?  Confuse you?  Does it cause you to feel disappointed? What do you think it means that marriage is more about holiness than happiness?  I would love to read your responses.

Larry Kayser,
Pastor of Marriage Ministries

photo credit: woodleywonderworks via Flickr
photo license: Creative Commons 2.0