The Meaning of Marriage: Facing the Complexities of Commitment with the Wisdom of God by Keller Timothy

Author:Keller, Timothy [Keller, Timothy]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Penguin Group
Published: 2011-11-01T04:00:00+00:00

Love Me—No, You Love Me

How do you give this life-healing love to your spouse so he or she actually feels loved? That is a very crucial subject and skill. Let me start with an illustration before I begin to lay out the principles.

In Kathy’s family, her father regularly helped her mother with the chores. He was very involved in the day-to-day domestic operations, including the care and feeding of the children. In my family, however, my father was never asked to do much in the way of chores inside the home, and in particular he wasn’t involved in clothing or feeding the kids. When we got married, we were barely aware of these differences in our family backgrounds, even though there had been one incident that should have tipped us off.

Once when I came to visit Kathy in her home, I ate dinner in the kitchen with her family. (We’d progressed beyond the “dining room and fine china” stage.) And when the meal was over I simply stood up and walked out of the room. My future mother-in-law was appalled. In Kathy’s household, everyone helped with the cleanup. At the very least, everyone was expected to take their plates and silverware and cups and any other item on the table next to their place and bring it to the sink or refrigerator. When she saw that I never even gave this a thought, she muttered something to Kathy about my wanting people to wait on me. But in my family, my mother would have been insulted if even family members—let alone a guest—helped with the dishes. That was her job—to serve and do all those menial tasks so that others did not have to do them.

This family background difference did not show itself in our marriage until the birth of our first child. I remember one day I was sitting holding David when Kathy was working in the kitchen. I noticed a funny smell and said, “Kathy, his diaper needs to be changed.”

And Kathy said, “Well you know what we say around our house, don’t you?”

“What?”

“Finders keepers!” She laughed. This meant, “Don’t look at me; I’m busy. You’ve got the child. You change his dirty diaper.”

But I found myself becoming quite angry. I felt—well, I couldn’t immediately put my finger on it. It seemed like a lack of respect. This shouldn’t be my job. When I resisted, then it was Kathy’s turn to feel annoyed. Hey, it’s just a dirty diaper. You aren’t busy and I am, she said. We didn’t resolve the issue that day, because we didn’t really understand what was going on. The care of the children in general, and smelly, poopy diapers in particular, became a bone of contention for a good while until we began to understand the underlying dynamics operating in our hearts.

Kathy’s mother had had a stroke when she was only in her forties, and her father had stepped in to do many practical household chores in a way that was atypical for our parents’ generation of working fathers and stay-at-home mothers.

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