Marriage by Charles R. Swindoll

Author:Charles R. Swindoll
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Published: 2013-02-07T05:00:00+00:00

SIX

What Families Need

to Thrive

When Edith Schaeffer, wife of the late philosopher and theologian Francis Schaeffer, decided to write her book on the home, she chose a title that asked the question, What Is a Family? Each of her chapter titles proposed an answer. Some of them are, “The Birthplace of Creativity,” “A Shelter in the Time of Storm,” “A Perpetual Relay of Truth,” “An Educational Control,” and my favorite, “A Museum of Memories.”

Let me ask you, as you stroll the halls of your museum of memories, what do you see? Beauty? Sadness? Do the exhibits recall mostly episodes of pain, mistreatment, perhaps even neglect or abuse? Maybe you see mostly recollections of laughter and artifacts from a joyous, delightful childhood. Take a few moments now to revisit your memory. Do it now. This could be important.

Carlos Baker, in his biography of Ernest Hemingway, notes that the legendary author struggled with anger, bouts of depression, and alcoholism. In his later years, Hemingway became more vulnerable regarding the truth of the “black rage” he often felt for his father. According to Baker,

Ernest mentioned the small shed for garden tools in the back yard at Windemere. It commanded a view of the path into which Dr. Hemingway sometimes stepped while working among his tomato vines. Ernest reported that when his father had punished him and he was angry, he had sometimes sat in the open door of the shed with his shotgun, drawing a bead on his father’s head.1

Ironically, it was a shotgun that Ernest Hemingway used to take his own life during the sustained delusion of his final days. What dark memories he had!

On the other hand, Corrie ten Boom was shaped by good memories of her “papa.” Every night as she crawled into bed, he placed a hand on her head and prayed for her, always ending their time together with the words, “Corrie, I love you.” She said that even the horrors of the concentration camp at Ravensbruck could not erase those memories. Sometimes closing her eyes at night would be difficult, having seen suffering and death all day. But she found peace by imagining her heavenly Father’s hand on her head saying to her, “Corrie, I love you.”

Memories are more than images stored in the attic or basement of your mind. They are part of the building material from which you are constructed. They are the pattern after which you will unconsciously construct your new home—your marriage, your family. And nothing has a greater influence on you than how you regard those memories, how you arrange them and interpret them, how you allow them to influence you consciously and even unconsciously.

This is a book about marriage, but not merely so. My overall concern is broader; it is for the family, the nucleus of which is the marital bond. Marriage is God’s invention, and He intended this lifelong, exclusive union between a man and a woman to become the foundation upon which a family is built. I am convinced that

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