The Ten-Minute Marriage Principle by Douglas Weiss

Author:Douglas Weiss [WEISS, DOUGLAS]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780446563017
Publisher: FaithWords
Published: 2009-06-27T00:00:00+00:00

8

THE TEN-MINUTE ARGUMENT

Tim and Darla were a precious seminary couple. Tim was from North Carolina and Darla from Alabama. Tim and Darla had just celebrated their third year of marriage. Tim had one more year of school left before he completed his master's in divinity. He had wanted to be a pastor his whole life. When other kids in his neighborhood wanted to play house or war, Tim wanted to play church and, yes, he was always the preacher.

Darla's parents were not Christians until she was in high school, when her dad lost his company to bankruptcy. Darla and Tim met in Bible college. They dated and stayed pure and accountable to their mentors at school. They married in their last year of college and lived on campus.

Tim and Darla looked like a young couple with so much promise. Tim could preach well, and Darla could touch your heart with a gospel song as few others her age could do. But according to Tim and Darla, they had a “huge problem.” No, it wasn't money, sex, friends, or the church they faithfully attended. It took them a while to explain their problem between their apologies: “I'm embarrassed.” “It's awful, and we both still want to be in the ministry.” Finally Tim leaned toward me, took a breath, and blurted out: “We fight!”

I really felt this was anticlimactic. I was expecting some deep, dark secret in one of their souls, an affair or stealing money.

“You fight,” I repeated. I didn't know what to say because I was so thrown off by Tim's anxiety about his revelation.

Tim went on to explain that he knows everybody disagrees from time to time, but that he and Darla really fight. He said he never saw his parents fight the way he and Darla did. He was very concerned that his marriage wouldn't make it and he'd never fulfill his call to ministry.

They told me the fights started about anything. The couple rapid-fired accusations and assumptions at each other. They eventually stooped to name-calling and occasionally even breaking things in their apartment. At the end, Tim usually walked out, but by then they were both wounded. To top it off, they were both so ashamed of the way they acted that they could barely talk about the issues that started the fight in fear of reigniting the bomb.

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