A grace-soaked partnership

Most of us know that expression about nothing changing more predictably than change itself.

Two books I’ve read recently remind me that change has long been a dominant feature of the institution of marriage.  One book is firmly conservative, but practical; the other, progressive, but in a mischievous way.

The conservative viewpoint is expressed in Marriage: 

6 Gospel Commitments Every Couple Needs to Make (Crossway, 2021) by Paul David Tripp, an updated version of his earlier book on marriage titled What Did You Expect?, first published in 2010.

The new version adds a study guide and two bonus chapters, including one on what Tripp calls the “sexual insanity” that has had a hugely destructive impact even on Christian marriages. 

The six commitments on which Tripp now focuses include a regular lifestyle of confession and forgiveness; growth and change in one’s daily agenda; working together to build a sturdy bond of trust and a relationship of love; dealing with differences with appreciation and grace; and striving to protect one’s marriage.

And those commitments are what Tripp brings to the forefront in his re-examination of what theological seminary professor Mary Kassian describes as a God-honoring relationship, which, when properly constructed, leads to a “loving, growing, grace-soaked” partnership.

Tripp explains in the preface to his new book that he now goes beyond his earlier discussion of misguided or failed marriage expectations to focus on the commitments of his subtitle. Also, he turns his lens on what he has learned as the result of his growth in the understanding of his own material, now looking more closely at marriage through the lens of the bible gospels.

Tripp is consistently insightful, offering practical advice rooted in his own life and marriage experience. And he boldly tackles even the tough topics, making the point that everyone’s marriage becomes something the partners didn’t intend it to be.

They are required to deal with things they didn’t plan to face. In every marriage, he says, the brokenness of the world makes things more complicated and difficult. 

But Tripp also points out that no marriage will be unaffected when the people in the marriage are seeking to get from the creation what they were only ever meant to get from the Creator. 

Which takes us to the next challenging question: What does a marriage rooted in the worship of God look like? And so on. 

By contrast, Anne Lamott’s new book is not really a marriage guide at all. It’s a collection of essays appearing in print at the time of her surprise marriage in 2019 (at age 65, via a matchmaking site for over-fifties): Dusk, Night, Dawn: On Revival and Courage (Riverhead, 2021).

As Lamott followers would expect, her wedding after two and a half years of living together—and the curiosity that generated—has provided her with dollops of not-so-raw material for her ongoing writing and public-speaking career.

But she simply accepts that the world “leaves grubby fingerprints all over everything: our hearts, minds, hope,” and she wonders what Soul Windex would look like!

Of course, the church-going Lamott doesn’t miss the opportunity to share spiritual truths based on her convictions about love and forgiveness (whether her husband agrees or not). 

She talks about her ongoing struggle with perfectionism,  which she describes as the most toxic condition for the soul. The next most toxic, she adds, is the ensuing and chronic contempt for oneself … along with the obsession that one is “right” and “better than.”

Lamott admits that in marriage her soul has been given permission to surface in a new if sometimes tentative way, changing from a “slothful, gluttonous bear” toward someone softer, less armored, and way less of a perfectionist.

She writes: “From time to time I forgive myself for being a bad forgiver. Forgiving ourselves is the advanced practice—its Senior Lifesaving.

And what of love? Lamott says she has learned that love plops and love also flies. “Love is the gas station and the fuel, the air and the water. … Love lumbers like an elephant, it naps on top of your chest like a cat. It gooses you, snickers, smooths your hair. Love is being with a person wherever they are, however they are acting.”

Love is not a concept, Lamott concludes. “It’s alive and true, a generative and nutritious flickering force that is marbled through life. I can hold it in my hands whenever I remember to, stroke its ivory belly, hear its crunch, its rustle.”

Does that approach seem valid enough for anyone contemplating marriage? And would David Tripp agree?