Beyond Ordinary: When a Good Marriage Just Isn't Good Enough (12 page)

JUSTIN & TRISHA:

THE GOD OF THE COVENANT

A covenant is different from a contract. While a contract has an element of commitment and promise attached to it, most contracts are conditional, temporary, and breakable. The heart of a covenant is different. It is based on the promise of those who enter it and their desire for it to be without conditions. In the Bible, God moves beyond the letter of the law of contract and initiates the covenant. He promises, unconditionally, to be faithful and to be the God of his people.

God’s vision for his relationship with us is a covenant. He is to be our God, and we are to be his people. In Genesis, God makes two covenants—two promises. He promises Noah that he will
never again destroy the earth by flood. Later in the book of Genesis, God makes what many consider the most important covenant in the Old Testament: he promises Abraham that he will make him a great nation and will bless all nations through Abraham. With that covenant, the nation of Israel is born. He later makes a covenant with Moses to lead the Israelites to the Promised Land. And later still, God promises King David that his descendants will be the line from which the Messiah will come.

The birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus ushered in what we call the
new covenant
. In this new covenant—this new promise—God promises to make us right with him through his grace and mercy, purchased by Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross. It is now possible to be forgiven for our sins through the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross is the fruition of this new covenant.

Unlike a contract, the covenant Jesus offers doesn’t expire. This promise doesn’t have to be renegotiated. Once we enter into a covenant relationship with Jesus, this promise is forever.

If you look throughout the Bible, you’ll see that even though God’s desire was to live in a covenant relationship with his people, his people were not good promise keepers. They were always breaking their promises. They promised to have no other gods before him (Exodus 20:3-4; 24:3), but then they made idols (Exodus 32:1-6). They promised to follow God’s law and meditate on it day and night (Deuteronomy 6:4-9), and then they did evil in the eyes of the Lord (Judges 2:11). They promised to trust God and put their faith in him, and then they questioned his presence and his plan.

While God viewed his relationship with his people as a covenant, they viewed their relationship with God as a contract. It is one of the reasons why Jesus told the parable of the Prodigal (or Lost) Son, which is really about
two
lost sons. We obviously think of this story as an example of God’s amazing grace to those who are far from him as shown in the Prodigal Son himself. But Jesus inserts the character of the older brother to illustrate our tendency to think contractually about God.

The older brother’s relationship with his father has obviously cooled to the point of contract at this point. The older brother is angry that his father lavishes such love on someone who has shirked his responsibilities, while the responsible one is living as a second-class citizen in his own home. But the father in the story explains the reality of the situation: “Look, dear son, you have always stayed by me, and everything I have is yours” (Luke 15:31). The older brother may not have gone to a “distant land” (Luke 15:13) like his younger brother, but he was there in his heart: he had forsaken the gifts his father had already given him. The father and the older son’s contractual relationship was one sided. The offer of covenant was always full and complete on the father’s part; the older son refused to accept it, turning the covenant into a contract.

While God desires covenant, humans have an uncanny ability to turn a covenant relationship into a contractual agreement. We’re really good at it in our relationships with God, and if we are honest, we do the same thing in our marriages.

DISCONTENTMENT & CONTRACTUAL MARRIAGES

One of the signs of a marriage moving from a covenant to a contract is discontentment. In the last chapter, we talked about unrealistic and unfair expectations, and discontentment is in many ways related to unmet expectations. Allowing unmet expectations to continue in our marriage creates a snowball effect into discontentment.

The problem with discontentment is that it convinces us that if
we were just a little bit more of this, or had a little bit more of that, or accomplished a little bit more of something else, then we would be content. But discontentment is hard to satisfy, and it will turn any great marriage into an ordinary marriage.

Discontentment lives in the fine print of a contractual marriage. When we have contractual marriages, we are never really satisfied. Our spouses are never quite good enough. They don’t fold the laundry up to our standards. They don’t keep the house as clean as we would like it. They don’t manage the finances up to our expectations. They could always be a little more in shape, a little more put together, a little more like someone else. Discontentment tries to convince us that we would be happier with something new, something else.

When we first get married, we are so impressed with all that our spouses are. We love their sense of humor; we admire their ability to take risks. We are blown away by their organizational skills. We are attracted to their laid-back attitude and disposition. It seems that everything they are is everything we aren’t. They are punctual; we are fashionably late. They are emotional; we are logical. They are impulsive; we are calculated. There is a deep sense within us that all of their strengths are all of our weaknesses, and that we complement one another feels really good. They will complete us. Or so we believe.

Over time, the strengths we saw in our spouses that complemented our weaknesses become weaknesses that complicate our strengths. We resent that they are laid back. We get mad that they always have to be on time. We hate the way they lay out their clothes before they go to bed, or how outgoing they are, or all the risks they are willing to take. What was once attractive now creates a sense of discontentment in our hearts. They aren’t good enough. They aren’t sensitive enough. They aren’t pretty enough. They aren’t interesting enough. Discontentment always pushes us to compare what we have to what someone else has. Even more dangerous, discontentment will always push us to compare who our spouses are to who someone else is.

But comparison is never about the person we are comparing to someone else. It is always about our own hearts. Where discontentment lives, brokenness thrives.

THE SUBTLE TRAP OF ENTITLEMENT

Discontentment leads to entitlement. Entitlement sets the tone that when our spouses fail to meet our expectations, we’re owed even more. Entitlement becomes the catalyst for remaining in ordinary. Entitlement permits us to take control of the situation from our spouses and from God. Entitlement cloaks the belief that we are the better spouse and make an even better god.

As Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt, God provided for their every need. In fact, he provided for their needs in supernatural ways. When the Israelites were thirsty, he made the bitter water taste good. When they were hungry, he rained down food from heaven and even rained down a double portion on the sixth day so they could honor the Sabbath. Food
rained down
from heaven—my (Trisha’s) dream come true. They didn’t have to plant it, harvest it, or process it; they just had to pick it up. Yet it was never enough. No matter what the Lord provided, the Israelites felt entitled to more. As a result of their constant feelings of entitlement, when the Lord didn’t provide for them in exactly the way they wanted, the Israelites sought their own means of fulfillment, breaking God’s laws and severing their relationship with God in the process.

In Exodus 33, we find Moses in an intense conversation with God. Because of his frustrations with the Israelites, God says he will send an angel with them into battle, but he will not go with them himself. He has tried to live in covenant with them, yet they continually opt for a contractual agreement. He’s not going back on his promise, but how he gives his promise is about to change.

Then Moses said to him, “If your Presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here. How will anyone know that you are pleased with me and with your people unless you go with us? What else will distinguish me and your people from all the other people on the face of the earth?”

The Israelites might have missed the point, but Moses saw the bigger picture. He knew that without God, it didn’t matter what the Israelites did or didn’t have. Nothing would be better than the presence of God.

But much like the Israelites, we can easily stop focusing on the
presence
of God and focus instead on the
presents
of God. We exchange the joys of the covenant for the drudgeries of the contract. And when we live in contractual relationships with God, it should come as no surprise that we live in contractual relationships with our spouses. We turn our disappointments into ransom notes for our hearts: our spouses must either give us what we want to get love from us or get nothing at all. When we take our eyes off God, we lose sight of the gift that our spouses
are
and focus on the gifts they aren’t giving us.

ENTITLEMENT’S THREE FAVORITE WORDS

Entitlement’s three favorite words are
You. Owe. Me.

Trisha and I made the decision from the time we knew she was
pregnant with Micah that she would stay home with our kids. She wanted to be a stay-at-home mom. She grew up in a family where both parents worked outside the home, and I grew up with a stay-at-home mom. So for each of us, in our own way, it was important for us to have Trisha stay home.

Maybe all husbands struggle with entitlement when their wives stay home. If they do, not many talk about it. I really struggled. I had this feeling that because I went to work and Trisha “got” to stay home, she owed me. I expected her to help in my ministry—to be a wife and a mom full time but then to fill holes as a small group leader or as a worship leader in our ministry. At first, my intentions were pure and good. But over time, my expectation came from a place of entitlement.

I had this deep-seated attitude that Trisha had to pay me back for me “allowing” her to stay home. I was doing her a favor. She should be grateful for what I was doing for her.

Entitlement allows gratitude and the mutual submission of a covenant to evaporate from a marriage, and it always knows what your spouse has to do to make it up to you.

• You want to go out with your friends? You owe me.
  
• You want to go shopping with your sister? You owe me.
  
• You want me to watch the kids so you can have a night out? You owe me.
  
• You expect to have dinner on the table when you get home? You owe me.
  
• You want me to work longer hours so you can be a stay-at-home mom? You owe me.
  
• You want me to have sex with you when I don’t feel like it? You owe me.
  
• You like having clean clothes in your closet each week? You owe me.
  
• You want me to come home early so you can go to the movies? You owe me.
  

Most of us get married with a high sense of gratitude. But as time goes on, everything we used to be grateful for we begin to feel entitled to. You can’t simultaneously be grateful for something and feel entitled to it.

Entitlement quietly turns extraordinary marriages into ordinary ones. Entitlement turns teammates into opponents. Entitlement allows us to overlook what we can give to a relationship and see only what we are owed by the other in the relationship. Entitlement enables us to believe that what we deserve is greater than what we should be thankful for. When entitlement sets into our hearts, ordinary is soon to follow.

Contractual agreements have stipulations and contingencies. If those contingencies aren’t met, then you are free to break the contract. You have an out. It’s telling that conditions and stipulations never make their way into our weddings, but they often take center stage in our marriages.

OUR PATH TO CHANGE

A lot of married couples who struggle with comparison and entitlement have good intentions. Wait a second: How can we have good intentions when we compare our spouses to someone else? How can spouses who have entitlement issues have good intentions? It is easy for those of us who are married to believe that comparisons and entitlement will bring the changes to our marriages that we desire. We think that our marriages will be different if our spouses’ behavior changes. We think our marriages will be different if our spouses finally give us what they owe us. Our underlying desire is a better marriage (which is good), but our problem is self-centered hearts (which is not).

Changes in our marriages don’t come by changing our spouses’ behavior; they come by allowing God to change our hearts. In failing to pursue that transformation, discontentment, comparison, and entitlement are the fool’s gold we settle for. The problem is
that instead of bringing us to extraordinary, they work together to leave us in ordinary.

Ordinary, because it is in many ways contractual, can see divorce as an option. Ordinary has no problem with contingencies and contingency plans. Ordinary allows us to picture ourselves with someone else. Ordinary leaves us never satisfied. Ordinary brings us to a place where we can’t love or receive love unconditionally. Ordinary makes us believe it’s okay to compare our spouses to someone else. Ordinary narrows our vision to see only the things that bother us about our spouses and forget the reasons why we love them. Ordinary leaves our marriages existing but not fulfilling.