As For Me and My House: Crafting Your Marriage to Last

by Walter Wangerin Jr.

When the realization comes, instead of withdrawing in anxiety or blame, praise the Lord and call it opportunity, for now you know the stuff with which this marriage will be made. Understand (this is critical) that you both are experiencing the selfsame disillusionment. You are in fact not separate from each other at this moment (though you may feel both separated and deceived); but, having the truth clearly between you now, you are the closer together. Moreover, you are enabled to be partners involved in the same work. This, too, is important. You are now, more than ever, each “a help perfectly fit” for the other, fellow laborers building the same house, of the same materials—but with different skills. Realization is the discovery of the differences between you, differences at first distressing. But if you see yourselves as partners and not as hostile strangers, you can both acknowledge and celebrate these differences. You can, according to your differing capacities, divide the work of the household, assigning certain duties to certain skills.