The Perfect Storm

"God puts us with our opposite. Our mutual brokenness plays off each other so perfectly that it is frightening. It's like throwing a dog and a cat in a dryer. Is he absolutley mad? Why would God do such a thing?


Because marriage is a divine conspiracy.

It is a conspiracy divinely arranged and with divine intent.


God lures us into marriage and then He uses it to transform us. We all have a way that we do life. We might call it our personality, or our natural bent---the way we handle pressure, the way we listen, the way we look for happiness, the way we control our world. We didn't sit down one day and willfully choose to adopt it but it remains a choice nonetheless. Call it our style of relating. It is a carefully crafted approach to life---especially to relationships----that colors the way we work, the way we love, the way we respond, and the way we simply have a conversation with people.


We are, all of us, utterly committed and deeply devoted to our "style", our "way", our "approach to life." We have absolutley no intention of giving it up. Not even for love. So God creates an environment where we have to. It's called marriage.


Take the fundamental differences of a man and a woman. Add to this the fact that opposites attract and our peculiarties are nearly always at odds. Toss in our profound brokenness, our sin, and our style of relating. It's the perfect storm.


Now listen carefully: God wants us to be happy. He really does. "I've come," Jesus said, "that you may have life and have it to the full" (John 10:10). He simply knows that until we deal with our brokenness, our sin, and our style of relating, we aren't going to be happy. Nobody around us is going to be very happy, either. Most of what you've been experiencing in the last twelve months is God's attempt to get you to face your style of relating and repent of it.


This is the old Christian understanding of the world, the understanding that happiness is the fruit of other things, chief among them our own holiness, and so we must undergo a transformation. We must be smoothed over. Just like the fairy tales, we must share in God's holiness before the story is finished."

~John and Stasi Eldredge from Love & War