Category: Family

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Sad Kids

At National Review, Mona Charon writes about an extensive study reported in the journal Translational Psychiatry: “Sex differences in recent first-onset depression in an epidemiological sample of adolescents.”  (Here’s an abstract of the study)  The sex difference findings are interesting—teen girls are twice as likely as boys to feel depressed—but the real punch to the gut is in the sheer numbers of kids who manifest severe anxiety, depression, and other forms of mental illness: about one in four.

Could this be due to more awareness of mental health issues, and better reporting? Less stigma or ignorance about depression, or even increased self-dramatizing among teens?  Maybe a little, but a pediatrician responding the Charon’s column on another website added an informal statistic that makes it real.  While reading, he checked his phone for the current status of the Emergency Department in the children’s hospital where he worked.  At that moment, 28% of patients were there for “suicidal ideation.”  “What Mona Charon writes about is the lived experience of every children’s hospital around . . . This is a national crisis.”

People were less depressed during the Great Depression.

People were less depressed during the Great Depression.

The two obvious questions are Why is this happening now? and What should we do?

As to why, social media, family breakdown, economic anxiety, political turmoil (it’s Trump’s fault!), and education all come in for blame.  But what do kids need that they’re not getting? Pretty much the same things we all need, which are

  • Meaningful relationships.  I would trace most of our social problems to no-fault divorce, which made the most essential social bond a matter of personal preference.  Since then, children have had the rug pulled out from under them.  Single-parenting is a huge predictor of all kinds of negatives, from low school performance to relationship failures in adulthood.  In the teen years, when kids begin the transition from parental relationships to peers and others (which should eventually lead to stable marriages of their own), social media is lurking for them.  Instead of bonding with friends, they bond with their devices.  Their real friends are their phones.
  • Meaningful education.  Somewhere in the early 20th century, public education began to divorce brains from souls.  Reductionism took over: humans can dream up whatever metaphysical system they want in their spare time, but at school, we’re all utilitarians.  Transcendence has no place in a melting-pot schoolhouse where not everybody shares the same religion or philosophy.  This wasn’t so obvious in my southern-culture elementary school, with our morning devotionals and music classes, but the trend was in place–it’s the subject of The Abolition of Man, a brief treatise that C. S. Lewis considered his most important work.  The intense focus is on academics now, to the detriment of the arts and even recess.  That’s because we’re educating brains, not people, and the supplementary education kids used to get from church or their parents is less likely to be there for them.
Those three summer jobs were at least as useful to me as the classes I took in school.
  • Meaningful work.  Who likes working?  I didn’t.  My mother had to push me out the door to get a
    job after graduating high school—otherwise, she said, no college.  I didn’t have the best reasons for going to college and no clear idea of what I wanted to do, but it was that or a full-time job.  Horrors!  Summer jobs were bad enough.  And yet, those three summer jobs were at least as useful to me as the classes I took in school: practical experience, being responsible, listening to instruction, getting chewed out when I didn’t.  (“At least you didn’t cry,” said my supervisor after one of those times, just before I escaped to the bathroom and bawled my eyes out.)  Every legitimate job is meaningful because it connects the individual to his community and creates a sense of obligation (as opposed to entitlement).  You show up; you do the job; you get paid.  Less than half of Americans get jobs while still in their teen years, and when they do enter the work force in their mid-twenties, they don’t seem to know what to expect.  I hear about millennials who have to be corrected carefully so as not to ruffle their feathers, and who get frustrated after eight months because they’re not “having an impact.”  Then there are those blue-collar dropouts who simply don’t show up.
  • Meaning, period.  Q: What is the chief end of man?  A: The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.  (Westminster Shorter Catechism, Question #1)  What can beat that for significance in life and death?  There you have it all: relationship, education, work—and heaven besides.  Even an atheist, whose philosophy offers him no objective reason for meaning in anything, can find it in family, art, democracy, benevolence, etc.  But it takes a strong will and other advantages, such a good parents, to find your own meaning in life once you’re turned loose to live it.   And if your life ultimately means nothing, why not OD on heroin and end it sooner?
We despise our youth, loading them up with the accoutrements of adulthood without expecting them to act like adults.

And that’s what we do: turn them loose.  A 16-year-old girl gets mixed messages about empowerment and victimization, while she longs for a loving relationship; a 19-year-old boy is told he’s toxic and unnecessary, while he inarticulately searches for some dragon to slay.  We despise our youth, loading them up with the accoutrements of adulthood (sex, cars, phones) but not expecting them to act like adults.

What to do?  Rescue them, one at a time.

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Mother’s Day: No Laughing Matter

I realized something for the first time when my kids were of an age for sleepovers and birthday parties: dads are funnier than moms.

I might have noticed it in my own house if it wasn’t right under my nose.  My husband was the one to get on the floor and wrestle, start sock fights, and make jokes when it was time to get serious.  That’s not to say I could never be found on the floor with kids crawling all over me, but there’s something different about mommy wrestling as opposed daddy wrestling–a certain lack of abandon and goofiness.  My daughter would come home from a party or church event with stories about how Cheri’s dad had made them laugh while driving them to the skating rink, or how Leslie’s dad had played a stupid trick that backfired.  It was never the moms.  Mothers could certainly be fun (I’d like to think I was. Maybe. Sometimes.), but seldom funny.

Several years ago Jerry Lewis made a controversial statement when asked who his favorite female comedians were.  His answer: None, because women aren’t funny. That raised a stink among women, many of whom seriously protested that they were funny—which kind of proved his point, in a way.  I would say that women aren’t funny in the same way.  They can be witty (as my mother was), clever, sharp, catty, artless, or charming, but there’s a reason male standup comics far outnumber females, and it doesn’t have much if anything to do with discrimination.  Of those few successful female comics, most of them are known for the mordant kind of humor: the biting, even bitter kind.  It’s because women, more than men, have a tragic view of life.  And that’s because of one thing: women have babies.

I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing;

in pain shall you bring forth children. (Gen. 3:16)

The Pain

The obvious interpretation of this verse limits the pain to labor and delivery.  But the pain of bearing a child lasts a lifetime, and it’s a particular pain that fathers do not share.  That’s because of the essential differences between the two:

Fatherhood is by choice; motherhood by necessity.

Fatherhood is dogmatic; motherhood is organic.

Fatherhood is straightforward; motherhood is serpentine and multi-faceted.

Fatherhood is tangential; motherhood is central.

Fathers are distinct; mothers are intimate.

At the back of a mother’s mind lurks a gigantic fear that something could happen to her baby, even if her baby is 45 years old.  The world yawns wide for our children: busy streets and nefarious strangers, fast cars and bad company, drunk drivers, sexual predators, drug dealers, gang leaders.  A good father will experience these same fears, but probably not until there’s some pretext for them (no what-if speculations for Dad), and not in the same gut-wrenching way if they occur.

Also, from the day our babies are born we have to start letting go of them, and sometimes it’s hard to know when. And how.  It isn’t just a matter of teaching them to crawl, walk, run, and drive; it’s teaching ourselves to stop identifying with them.  They were us; how can they stop being us?  When does their behavior stop being our responsibility?  When do their choices no longer reflect on our child-raising skills?

The Gain

Of course, there are mothers . . .

And yet, a great irony: The more a mother clings to her child, the smaller motherhood becomes.  The true joy of mothering increases with every step your child takes away from you.  Conceiving, carrying,

bearing, and delivering a baby into this world is the beginning of the pain, but also of the gain: a mature human being with his or her own personality, gifts, and vision.  That’s the goal, and I challenge anyone to name me a better one.  No six-figure income or tabloid-worthy career even comes close.  Motherhood is a double investment in life: the opportunity to grow up again by experiencing its primary discoveries through the eyes of a child and the understanding of a grownup, and the chance to pay it forward with a human being who will make the world a slightly better place.

If your grown child causes you more grief than joy (and a lot of them do), first check your expectations to

. . . and there are mothers.

make sure you’re not looking for Mini-me: someone who thinks and acts as you do and agrees with 95% of your political and theological positions.  (If you actually ended up with a kid like that, you’re either very exceptional or your son or daughter got swapped for a robot somewhere down the line.)

But say your expectations were reasonable and your child-raising skills were at least adequate.  What went wrong?  Maybe nothing; maybe it’s time to let disappointing children become themselves, and answer for themselves. Trust God with them.  They are still human beings with immortal souls.  Yours will always be the first warm touch they felt, the first loving voice they heard. You pushed them out and raised them up—this is the great human enterprise, and mothers are right in the middle of it.

That’s not funny.  But it’s phenomenal.

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Happily Ever After for Real

Is it a coincidence that so many fairy tales and traditional stories in the western tradition end with a wedding?  But they never continue with a marriage, beyond “and they lived happily ever after.”

It’s as if the wedding itself is what the story was reaching for, even though it may have looked like the story was about conquering fear or receiving one’s just reward o forgiving one’s enemies.  The reward of the hero or heroine’s striving is consummation—literal, spiritual, and social.  The marriage that follows the wedding is an induction into what we might call real life: establishment and responsibility.  One life merges with another and produces new life—more individuals who will set off from safe homes on dangerous missions to become who they are and receive marriage as a reward, from which they will make homes for the next wave of individuals to set out and become  . .

The marriage is not the story, because happily-ever-after is not an essential conflict.  Marriage brackets the story; it’s the home-situation at the beginning and the fading horizon at the end.  It’s what we came from and what we are going toward.

I wonder if one reason for the dissolution of the family in modern American society is that we’re trying to make marriage the story, instead of the launchpad and culmination of the story.

Here’s what I mean.  Stories are about struggle.  Every story has to have a conflict, and the essential conflict is how the individual makes peace with the world (or the situation).  Stories are about individuals, not groups.  Even those interminable James Michener sagas that unfold the history of an entire nation or a group of people could only work by zooming in on the experience of individuals throughout the centuries.  In a story the individual is always at war—with social norms, with injustice, with rivals for glory, goods, or affection, with the darker or less admirable traits within, or any combination of these.

There’s no better visual illustration of conflict, perhaps, than distinctions between male and female.  She is soft where he is tough; she relates while he competes; she nurtures while he protects, and so on.  (I am aware that these are stereotypes, but stereotypes are built on fact.)

How can an individual man or woman be at peace?  How can disparate personalities reconcile?  That’s the question asked in all great fiction: Will Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy stop looking past each other?  Will Belle recognize her love for the Beast before it’s too late?  Will Anna silence her guilty conscience and find happiness with Vronsky?

And the greatest conflict of all, though not fictional: Can a holy God be reconciled with an unholy and rebellious people?

Classic stories—often, not always–ended in marriage, even if they’re weren’t primarily love stories, and even if it wasn’t the main character getting married.  It’s only in modern times that stories have come to be about marriage.  It’s easy to see why: two people striving for harmony, especially if they’re as different as male and female, is rich material for drama.  Novels about marriage can be insightful and rewarding—as fiction.  Making marriage your story in real life can be asking for trouble.

Making marriage your story in real life can be asking for trouble.

Because, remember, stories are all about fighting.  If it ends in defeat, it’s a tragedy.  If in victory (meaning reconciliation), it’s a comedy.   A classic Christian marriage is mutual surrender where each says to the other: I’m no longer just me.  I’m part of us.  I’ve fought my fight and made my peace; I’ve figured out how to be us while still being me.

Past generations understood that, which is why divorce was so rare even if the union wasn’t happy.

I’m not saying that marriage was not a challenge in the past, or that the two individuals within a marriage had no more growing up to do.  But moderns want to carry on the struggle.  Instead of settling into boring old happily-ever-after and pouring their energies into the next generation, they (we?) want to continue the quest for self-fulfillment and discovery and drama.  Marriage is part of our plot: Will Dan find happiness with Diana, or is his real future with Donald?  One thing for sure: he will never settle for fading into the woodwork.

Instead of settling into boring old happily-ever-after and pouring their energies into the next generation, we want to continue the quest for self-fulfillment and drama.

Marriage is not supposed to be the plot: it’s supposed to be the woodwork—or the floor, or the scaffolding that will launch the stories of our children.  That’s why fairy tales have to end with a wedding: the individual has found her place and joined hands with another to form a community.  That was a reflection of real life.  If we could examine all the monogamous marriages throughout history until today, we would find that some were heaven, some were hell, and the vast majority were good enough—all weaving together to build a platform for the next generation.

With ever more people acting out their conflicts within the marriage, or not bothering to marry at all, the platform is crumbling.  New generations may not even know there supposed to be one—just an ocean of individuals bobbling up and down in a never- ending quest for happiness.

The Bible still ends with a wedding, though.  The marriage will follow and will show us what marriage was supposed to be about, all along: all our struggles ended; finally me; finally us; fully Him.

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Family Inclusive . . . But How?

There’s didn’t used to be a name for it; families just did it.  There was no children’s church or kid’s club–except for crying babies, who had their time out in the “cry room,” all ages sat through worship together.  I sat by my grandfather and begged cough drops and Juicy Fruit gum, studied the glossy illustrations in my King James Bible, re-read my Sunday school papers, drew in the margins and eventually (as the years went by) started paying attention.  I also remember being taken out a few times. That was bad news.  Nobody wanted to be taken out.

But somehow we got away from all the fuss and bother of little kids in church–so far away, that to get back we have to call it something in order to distinguish ourselves: Family Inclusive.  It’s a welcome development in a lot of ways but since it’s no longer the norm, moms and dads may have to be a little more intentional: Just how to you train little ones to sit still in church?

Step One: recognize that you’re not just training them to sit still in church.

“Sitting still” may be the immediate goal but it’s not the ultimate goal.  The whole point of keeping children in the worship service is to train them for worship.  I was taught to sit still but I don’t remember being taught what it was all about.  Also, church services have been going more toward spectator sport than active participation.  Keeping young children–say, from the age of two or thereabouts–in worship with us is an on-the-spot, hands-on opportunity to teach them about God and his church and what we mean to him as a body of believers.

Sounds nice, doesn’t it?  But how . . .

Step Two: Preparation. 

First of all, prepare yourself.  If your attitude is we’ll-grit-our-teeth-and-try-to-get-through-another-Sunday-morning, the kids will pick up on that.  I once heard one mom tell another that Sunday was the toughest day of the week for her.  I understand that and appreciate the honesty.  Still . . . it’s not necessarily a state of mind we should just accept, as though for the next five years or so you won’t expect to get anything out of church.  Some Sundays with preschoolers will be a big blur of juggling graham crackers and juice bottles and sitting on the edge of a blowup.  Yet you can ask God to help you overcome your dread of the Sunday morning sanctuary and look forward to  joining the everlasting chorus while you take your little ones another step forward in their walk with Jesus.  It’s a great privilege to be able to do that.  (It really is!)

This blog post made the rounds a few years ago, but it’s worth reading again as a pick-me-up when your spirits are low: Dear Parents with Young Children in Church.

You should also begin to prepare the kids.  Some families attend a traditional church, with a designated Song of Assembly, Song of Praise, Song of Confession, Congregational prayer and offering, Song of Preparation, etc.  Others are more free-wheeling (20 minute praise & worship, testimonials, prayer requests, message).  But every church has some kind of structure or plan for worship times.  Little children should learn why we do those things:  “First we’re going to sing about how great God is.  Then we’ll sing about how sorry we are for our sins . . .”  This kind of preparation leads naturally to

Step Three: Practice

Practice at home.  If you have a regular family devotional time, that’s a terrific opportunity to get prepared.  If you don’t have a regular devotional time, what are you waiting for?  Consider setting aside ten minutes or so on Saturday evening to talk about what we’ll do next morning, and why.  For some of these prep times, if the kids are young enough to find it fun and not corny, stage a mini-worship service with older ones delivering a devotional message or a Bible reading and younger ones suggesting or leading songs.  (If you know anything about music, teach them to beat out rhythms or follow along with simple sight-reading.) This can be fun, but it should never be silly.  We don’t giggle and cut up when we’re talking about God.

Practice listening at home.  If the kids pay attention while you’re reading aloud to them, you know they can do this.  You’ve trained them since they could sit up: first with picture books, then with longer stories, then with full length novels.  So why not find some good sermons online and, once or twice a week, have them sit down and listen for a few minutes.  Before they get up again, they have to tell you something they heard.  They’re used to your voice and know that when you start reading aloud they’ll hear something good.  Now they need to learn to listen to other people, with the understanding that they’ll hear something good from them, too.  Maybe not action packed or roll-on-the-floor funny, but there are all kinds of good.  Start at age four, or whenever verbal skills are up to speed, and ask for four minutes of attention.  If you’re starting at age five, ask for five minutes.  Six-year-olds can sit for six minutes, and so on.  If they can’t repeat anything they heard, have them sit for a few more minutes of listening time and try again.

Practice praying at home.  Of course you already do this, right?  If not, why not?  I’ve been thinking about ways to make prayer more relevant to kids, and hope to have more to say about that later, but most home-prayers are about personal needs and relationships.  The difference in church is corporate prayer, or kneeling before God as a community of believers with group needs.  The Saturday-evening devotional time would be great for praying specifically about the church.  Have the children suggest particular people and share with them specific needs that you know of.  Be sure to pray for the pastor and next day’s worship service, and close the prayer with a petition  that we can all pay attention and be respectful of others.  If a pastoral prayer is part of your regular church service, remind them that they can be praying along with the pastor.

Step Three: Doing It.  Hey, that sounds like fun! you’re thinking.  Or, Okay: one more thing to add to my to-do list but it might be worthwhile . . . However, you can have a great time playing church on Saturday evening but there’s still Sunday morning to get through: wiggling 3-year-olds, whispering 5-year-olds, sulky pre-teens and a toddler under the pew ripping up visitor cards.  Knowing what it’s all about isn’t the same as doing it.  It’s time to call in reserves and get the whole church on board.  Next week!

In the meantime, more motivation from Gospel Coalition: Four Reasons Your Kids Should Sit with You on Sunday.

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When NOT to “Pray about It”

“I’ve prayed about it and I feel at peace.”

Peace about what?

“About filing for divorce.  No—he’s not abusive or neglectful; we just can’t agree about anything.  We fight all the time and the kids are picking up on the tension.  This isn’t what marriage is supposed to be about.  He’s not going to lift a finger—of course—but if I file he won’t object.”

* * * * * * * * * *

“We’ve prayed about it, and it seems like the thing to do.”

What’s that?

“Leaving the church.  Yes I know, it’s only been two years since we formally joined and stood up in front of the congregation and made those promises, but we aren’t happy with the way things are going.  There’s also that one guy that really rubs us the wrong way . . . no, we can’t put our finger on why it is, but they made that guy an elder!  We’re going to start looking around next Sunday.”

But remember, we prayed about it.  It’s always good to pray . . . unless what you really mean is, We talked to God and decided we were all on the same page about what we should do.  But God already has a page, and that’s the one we’re supposed to be on.

How often do you catch yourself trying to get Him to agree with what you want to do, rather than searching out what he wants, and then asking for faith to do it?  Because—let’s face it—what he wants you to do is often going to be hard.  Maybe so hard it seems impossible.  Maybe you even know, way down deep, what God wants, but you personalize it or generalize it or rationalize it or hedge it around with so many qualifiers the central command is smothered.

I know God hates divorce, but— (the bills, the fights, the chill, the drag, the chain)

I know Christ loves his church but— (the leadership, the bad decisions, the misunderstandings)

If you find yourself rationalizing, the first thing to do is surgically remove that three-letter word BUT.  The reason is because it opens the door to every excuse.  So cut it off and kick it out.  When it whimpers and scratches at the door, harden your heart.  Expel the fatal conjunction, invite the conjunctive adverb:

I know God hates divorce.  Therefore . . .

I know Christ loves his church.  And so . . .

Yes, there are valid reasons to end a marriage or leave a church.  If the reason is not so valid, prayer will not get God on your side.  When not to pray:

  • When you already know what the Bible says
  • When you know your own will is leaning against what the Bible says
  • When you’re fishing for justification for those inclinations

Don’t pray about what you already know.  Pray for what you desperately need—the strength, faith, love, and determination to do it.

 

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“Quite Contrary” Females

World subscribers may have read my column in the Jan. 21 issue called “Quite Contrary” (I didn’t pick the title but it’s a good one).  Columns about male-female relationships, especially in marriage, always gets a large response.  None was greater than “Upside-Down Headship” last March, when some men accused me of beating up on husbands while some women shared heartbreaking stories about being emotionally beat up.

The response to “Quite Contrary” was significant though not as great in volume.  The springboard for the column was  an article on the Atlantic blog about a translation controversy with the English Standard Version (ESV) of the Bible.  Way back in 2000 or thereabouts, the editors of WORLD made a style decision to use the ESV for all scripture quotes used in the magazine.  So the article caught my attention.  Apparently several Bible scholars have protested a decision by the ESV translation team to update their rendering of Genesis 3:16 to read “your desire shall be contrary to your husband” rather than “your desire shall be for your husband.”  To the disapproving Bible scholars, this puts women in an unnecessarily negative light.  I understand that response, but the point is not whether the translation is unnecessarily negative but whether it’s true—both to the original sense of the passage as well as to the behavior we observe around us.

And is it?  Probably not in every single case, but surely in mine.  I desire a loving relationship, but I want it on my own terms.  What those terms look like is often contrary to my husband, and it’s been a source of bitterness.  One little indicator: whenever anything goes wrong in my life, even a small thing like a habitually stuck drawer, my instinct is to blame him.  Not every time, but often enough.  Why? Because he’s not keeping up repairs or he made a bad business decision years ago or—or—  There’s always something.  But on a deeper level, it’s because my desires are so often contrary to his, and even contrary to him.

Some of the women who responded to that column have very interesting insights: “I react to my husband like I react to no one else,” wrote one (meaning, not in a good way).  Yes!   Another says, “[The common translation of Gen. 3:16] has long perplexed me, since by listening to most women, desiring their husband was not their strongest motivation.  On the contrary, his desire for her was more of a concern.” Yes!!  God created women to long for relationship, and we’re better at it—women tend to make friends more easily, bond to their children more quickly, and share their deepest thoughts with their husbands more easily (even if the guys are not always fascinated by our deepest thoughts). But it’s in our relationships that sin rears its ugly head, just as it’s the husband’s natural authority role that Satan loves to twist and corrupt.

Interesting fact: only one man disagreed with me about “Quite Contrary,” and it was more about the Bible translation I was using than the point of the article.  The wives agreed: Yes, that was me until I recognized what I was doing.  Many more men disagreed with me about my “Upside-down Headship” column, or they agreed in principle, but wanted to make sure I gave the faults of wives equal time.

My non-scientific instinct is that men tend to be a bit more defensive about their marriage relationships than women, which bears out what God said back in the garden: Your desire shall be contrary to your husband [relationship is where sin gets to us] but he shall rule over you [authority is where sin snares our husbands, either in the abuse of it or the neglect of it].  All the more reason to be grateful that God’s desire for us is greater than our tangled desires here on earth.

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Don’t Make Your Husband Be Your Best Friend

They were such a cute couple.  He was a youth leader at church, and she was his high school sweetheart.  They tied the knot with style: with singing attendants, recorded expressions of love to each other, loads of family participation, and really nice dresses.  About a year after the wedding, I stopped by with a few friends to visit their little apartment (how we all wanted our own little apartments with that special somebody!).  They were happy as clams.  “Marriage is supposed to be this big adjustment,” she told us.  “But really, we were best friends for so long before we got married, there wasn’t that much to adjust to.”

Best friends . . . that might have been the first time I heard that description of husband and wife.  It made an impression.  Marrying your best friend seemed like a foolproof formula.

It wasn’t too long after that—two years, at the most—when I heard they divorced.  The story was that she’d cheated on him with one of their “best friends” from high school.

Huh.

This little story is probably apropos of nothing, except that “marrying your best friend” is not a foolproof formula.  When it comes to marriage, nothing is foolproof, but here (in bullet points) is why I think we’ve oversold the spousal-best-friend concept:

  • In general, men and women do friendship differently.  Guys are comrades, teammates, colleagues.  They bond over projects or goals.  They are capable of heart-to-heart talks, but only after establishing certain parameters.  The ladies, being more relational, always have their feelers out for attachment and the boundaries are much more permeable.  In a dorm room or a coffee shop or a late-night wine-and-chocolate fest with the gals, we tend to spill our guts.
  • Related to that, men and women have different expectations of friendship.  With guys, it’s working together to get something done or solve a problem.  With women it’s talking through the thing that needs doing or working through their feelings over the problem.  Yes, I know that’s a bit of a stereotype, but stereotypes have to come from somewhere–usually from the facts.
  • From eHarmony radio ads. I gather that everybody’s looking for a soulmate.  Whatever that is.  Soulmates are usually made, not found; made over a long period of time, with lots of patience and shared experience.  If you’re expecting, on the basis of a few deep conversations with your fiancée, that your souls will mate right along with your bodies, you’re probably in for a shock.
  • Marriages are under enough strain without the burden of best-friend expectations.  You’ve promised to love someone for as long as you both shall live, to stay together through all the circumstances of life (good and bad), to go one way even when you both want to go separate ways.  Those are crazy promises and they require crazy commitment.  Sometimes you are not going to be friends.  That person who is thwarting your will, that person you are stuck to for life can sometimes look a lot like an enemy.  Those dilemmas can usually be worked through—unless you convince yourself that since your spouse is no longer your best friend, the whole relationship is built on false premises and is therefore over.
  • Marriage and friendship are different relationships with different structures and purposes.  Friendship is side by side; marriage is face to face.  Friendship is cumulative; marriage is transformative.  One of the most striking insights I ever read about marriage was in a novel written by someone who wasn’t married at the time: “Those who are enjoying something, or suffering something together, are companions.  Those who enjoy or suffer one another, are not.”*  Marriage is enjoying or suffering one another, not necessarily in equal balance.  And speaking of equal, the equality that’s a necessary element of friendship is the last thing a husband or wife should be concerned about.

Of course, friendship is a great thing for a marriage to be; it just won’t always be that, or only be that.  When the marriage is under stress for internal or external reasons, loyal friends outside the marriage (not of the opposite sex) can an indispensable means of relieving some of the pressure.  It’s hard to find such friends.  I’ve written elsewhere how churches that focus so intently on building strong marriages tend to neglect building strong friendships.  But we need a theology of friendship (do I feel a book coming on?) to help build those strong marriages as well as to serve members who aren’t married.  Good friendships may even be rarer than good marriages.  But that’s a subject for another post.

Puppies! Because . . . puppies.

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*C. S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength, Chapter 7 (“The Pendragon,” section 2)