Twenty years ago today, Rachael and I were married in Conyers, GA. Surrounded by family and friends, we made our vows on the same platform where Rachael’s parents made theirs 28 years earlier. The picture below gives a fairy tale feel to the event. It is not inaccurate. While plenty of things in our lives have been difficult, we have lived happily ever after.
Speaking for myself, I sensed in that room a relief among those who knew me best that I had found such a tremendous person of character, integrity, depth, wisdom, and devotion to Jesus with whom I could become a more whole person. It’s not that I needed to be tamed—I was always the compliant firstborn who followed the rules and didn’t give my parents any trouble. It’s not that I needed to be motivated—I was driven in my seminary studies and my pursuit of pastoral ministry. It’s that, like everyone, I have blind spots. And I needed someone near enough to me to point them out.
In Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, the metaphorical dance between Mr. Darcy and Miss Elizabeth Bennett throughout the novel is catalyzed by his refusal of a literal dance with her at a country ball. I don’t mind spoiling the ending of a 225-year-old book: when Darcy and Elizabeth finally fall in love, he reflects on her shocking, earlier refusal of his marriage proposal. “I have been a selfish being all my life, in practice, though not in principle. As a child I was taught what was right, but I was not taught to correct my temper. I was given good principles, but left to follow them in pride and conceit… Such I was, from eight to eight and twenty; and such I might still have been but for you, dearest, loveliest Elizabeth! What do I not owe you! You taught me a lesson, hard indeed at first, but most advantageous. By you, I was properly humbled.”
While Rachael and I are not perfect analogs of Elizabeth and Darcy, his words to her sing my theme of 20 years of marriage to Rachael: By you, I was properly humbled; the blind spots were exposed. I couldn’t see how selfish I was until the beginning months of our marriage when I had to share nearly everything with another person. I couldn’t see how the male chauvinism of my Deep South upbringing had seeped into my mindset until Rachael called me out on it. I couldn’t see how some of my clever takes were insensitive and uncaring until she held up the mirror. Yet neither could I see that my inability to do everything right—home repairs, for starters—had no bearing on whether or not I was loved. This was the most humbling of all. “I didn’t marry you because you were handy,” she would remind me as I seethed over the drywall project that I only made worse. “I married you because I love you.”
Marriage is not required for such relational intimacy and marriage does not automatically humble us if we are not open to direct rebuke and unmerited affection. A question each of us should ask ourselves is, “Who do I intentionally spend time with so we can speak grace and truth into each other’s blind spots?” What I could sense in the room 20 years ago among close friends and family was that this woman who was equal parts sweet and strong would help me see what I couldn’t see and that I would be better for it. And in the church, we will be the better for allowing wise, mature, safe people deep into our lives enough that they can hear our stories, see us when we aren’t at our best, and speak words of both confrontation and comfort. As Paul wrote to the Colossian church, the way the gospel word about Christ dwells richly among us is when we both teach and admonish one another “in all wisdom” (Colossians 3:16), skillfully applying the truths about our brokenness and Christ’s grace to specific situations.
Such humbling in marriage should not be mistaken for bygone tropes about “the old ball and chain” or “who wears the pants” that imply emasculation. This is emancipation, the repentance and brokenness that frees us from presumption and self-sufficiency, opening our hearts wider to receive God’s delight in us. This too is captured in Austen’s novel. Before Elizabeth and Darcy finally unite, her sister Jane, deeply in love and engaged to the kind and wealthy Mr. Bingley, expresses her longing that Elizabeth be as happy as she. Elizabeth replies, “If you were to give me forty such men, I never could be so happy as you. Till I have your disposition, your goodness, I never can have your happiness.”
Humbling is the pathway to deeper joy. It is no more pleasant than a root canal. Yet when you can luxuriate in the savory goodness of a steak again, you know it was worth it. I have much humbling ahead of me over the next 20 years of my marriage with Rachael. And I probably won’t like most of it. But when we check in on December 20, 2043, any increase of “happily ever after” will owe to more blind spots being wisely exposed so that the word of Christ, the message of extravagant grace, can take full residence in our home.
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