Beyond Ordinary: When a Good Marriage Just Isn't Good Enough (9 page)

Second, be patient in this process. The odds are that it took you some time to drift into ordinary; it will take you some time to arrive at extraordinary. There will be pain. Unlike the pain you are in now, the pain of truth telling is redemptive pain. It is like the setting of a broken bone. It does hurt in that moment, but the result is a bone put into a place to heal, strong and whole. That is what you will experience in this process. As you allow the waterline of your heart and life to be lowered, it will be painful. You may have to deal with truth you have been avoiding for a long time. But it will be worth it.

I love what David says in verse seven of Psalm 32: “You are my hiding place.” Life is lived differently when we stop trying to hide our sin and instead allow God himself to be our hiding place. When God is our hiding place, we don’t have to run from him; we run
to
him because he is our refuge. Hiding in God means he knows all of us. We share our fears; we share our sorrows; we share our failures; we share our past; we share our hearts. Hiding in God means that everything is exposed before him and that what people see most when they look at us is him.

When God is your hiding place, you don’t have to distort truth. When God is your hiding place, you don’t have to pretend. When God is your hiding place, ordinary makes way for extraordinary.

Ordinary marriages share part of the truth and put a lid on intimacy. Extraordinary marriages live with no secrets.

QUESTIONS

1. Of the three fears listed, which do you struggle with the most: fear of being exposed, fear of emotional pain, or fear of not being loved? Why do you think you struggle with this?
   
2. Being fully known is a choice to lower the waterline. What are the icebergs in your marriage that need to rise to the surface?
   
3. What does the story of King David reveal about unconfessed sin and withholding or distorting truth? About lowered waterlines and repentance? In what ways do you see yourself or your marriage in David’s story?
   
4. What are some ways you need to rely on God to give you the marriage you’ve always wanted?
   

In Exodus 15, the extraordinary journey God has taken Moses and the people of Israel on takes its own turn of unexpected events. If God is powerful enough to do so many miracles, it seems reasonable to conclude that he will also be good with directions. But only
three days
into their journey, the Israelites start to lose faith. Only three days after singing God’s praises (see Exodus 15:1-24), the complaints start flying.

How quickly Moses moves from hero to villain in their eyes! With great intensity and speed, the people of Israel voice their unmet expectations: “This is all Moses’ fault! We should never have moved.”

Have you ever taken a huge leap of faith only to find that you may have romanticized the outcome? What you pictured in your mind was this extraordinary journey that would somehow make life feel better or more complete. Maybe your first leap of faith was getting a college degree, buying a new house, starting a business, or marrying your spouse.

Maybe your romanticized journey started in a childhood that never became the fairy tale you imagined it would be, and like me (Trisha), you entered into your marriage expecting life to be different. Because your spouse was different, you would be different, and therefore life would be different. Weeks, months, or years into your marriage, your unmet expectations feel like the same desert in which you started.

If you’ve made it this far in the book, then you know that just hours into our epic adventure of marriage, we found out that our fairy-tale story wasn’t going quite the way we had planned.

In our attempts to dream big, we made sure to create lists of expectations for how our dreams should become realities. But when those expectations weren’t met, frustration set in and dreams died as life moved into the ordinary.

TRISHA:

When we made our leap of faith to move back to the Chicagoland area, we needed temporary housing until our apartment was ready. We found refuge with the Trethaways, whose son Chris attended Bible college with us. Their house was a spacious open concept with windows from floor to ceiling. (This is an important detail to remember.)

Only a day after arriving, Justin left to begin his first day as a youth pastor at our new church. Our then-one-year-old son, Micah, had free rein of the house. Just an hour into our day together, I used the restroom on the main level, and after I flushed the toilet, it overflowed onto Mrs. Trethaway’s beautiful bathroom mats and floor. A bit frustrated, I put Micah into his high chair so I could clean up the mess.
It’s going to be okay
, I told myself.

As the bath mats washed, I let Micah out to play. Things were looking up. After all, I was “back home,” closer to family, which meant life and ministry would be easier. After putting the mats in the dryer, I walked into the kitchen, only to realize my toddler had
gone MIA! I could hear him crying but couldn’t find him. I was freaking out. A minute felt like an hour as I desperately tried to draw myself closer to his cries. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed that one of the windows was open and the screen was missing. Missing toddler, missing screen could only mean one thing. Yes, Micah had fallen
out the window
and onto (or rather into) a bush.

His big brown eyes looked as relieved as mine when I scooped him up and held him tight. Quietly saying to myself,
It’s going to be okay
, I decided that spending the rest of the day in our bedroom with a locked door and closed window would make for a safer afternoon. Before we locked ourselves away, one more trip to the bathroom was needed, and this time, to play it safe, I used the upstairs bathroom
and
took Micah with me. Minutes later—you guessed right—toilet number two was now wildly overflowing, and this time mats
and
a toddler were soaked in gross toilet water. There was no
It’s going to be okay
talk at this point, only a loud shout of “This sucks!”

Long before text messages, communication was a simple phone call. In the midst of the chaos, Justin called to check in, expecting a simple “Things are going great” to flow from my mouth. Instead he received a play-by-play of my day. Before I could get to the part about Micah’s going MIA, Justin interrupted and said he was sorry, but he had to go—the staff was taking him out to lunch.
Well, how wonderful for him
, I thought later as I ate my cold pieces of cut-up hot dog left over from Micah’s lunch.

After two overflowed toilets, an MIA toddler, and an uncaring husband, a nap sounded like the best way to retreat. I was overwhelmed with frustration. I felt like
I
was the one packing and unpacking again.
I
was the one figuring out where to go grocery shopping.
I
was the one who had to find new doctors and get records transferred. In my mind,
I
was pulling most of the weight on the home front while Justin “worked” at lunches where he was served and didn’t have to eat cold food from a screaming toddler’s plate.

As I lay in bed trying not to make a peep, hoping that Micah would fall asleep in his portable crib, the same darkness that had
overtaken the room took over my heart. I had romanticized this move as being to the Promised Land, giving me the extraordinary marriage and ministry I longed for. This move would fix so much in my life and my relationship with Justin. But just like the Israelites, days into this new journey the only thing that had changed was the landscape. I was no closer to living an extraordinary marriage than I was before, and all I could think was,
We should never have moved
.

JUSTIN:

One of the misconceptions I had in ministry was my own importance. I am a very driven, goal-oriented person. I had been cut from the basketball team in seventh grade and was cut again in eighth grade. What would have defeated some challenged me. I left the locker room in eighth grade telling myself that no one would ever tell me I wasn’t good enough again. I wanted to prove how valuable I was, and basketball became my way to do that.

I had the same conquest and achievement mind-set in my relationship with Trisha. She didn’t want to go out with me—I wasn’t good enough. I wanted to prove to her that I was worth dating. I wanted to fulfill her every need. I wanted her to be completely satisfied in our relationship. I didn’t want her to feel discontented in any way. I found my value in being strong when she was weak. I found my value in solving problems and coming to her rescue. That is what a good husband does, I thought, and I wanted to exceed her expectations.

Now eighteen months into marriage, that desire to exceed expectations moved from marriage to ministry. My desire to impress others, to be valuable to others and feel important, drove me.

A few months after we arrived in Illinois, I was asked to speak at our new church on Sunday morning. The senior pastor was going out of town, and he wanted to give me the chance to speak and to allow the congregation to get to know me. I was honored and excited. I don’t remember what the message was about, but I
do remember the response after the service—and how the response made me feel.

I was standing in the lobby after the service, and an older man approached me with his hand outstretched. “I’ve been coming to this church for over fifteen years,” he said, “and that was the best message I’ve ever heard on a Sunday morning.” I smiled, said thank you, and told him how much I appreciated his kindness.

A short time later, I was asked to speak again. I felt so much pressure. How could I impress these people again? How could I top my last message? How could I get as many compliments after this message as I had after my last one?

The week I was speaking arrived, and I had nothing. No great idea. No inspired word. What I did have was a stack of John Ortberg tapes in my car. John Ortberg was a teaching pastor at Willow Creek at the time and one of my favorite teachers. I went to my car and grabbed a tape. For the next two hours, I sat in my office and transcribed one of his messages word for word. A few days later, I stood on the stage and delivered John Ortberg’s message as if it were my own.

Subtly and slowly, I began to rely more on what
I
did in ministry than on what God could do. I suffered from the messiah complex. I wanted to be everyone’s savior, and my ministry and my marriage became completely dependent on me and my performance.

My performance was an indicator of my value. Without even realizing it, I thought,
If I’m not at this event, then it won’t be as successful. If I don’t speak this weekend, then students won’t come back next week. If we don’t get together with this couple, then their marriage will fail. If we don’t have them over for dinner, then they’ll stop serving.

While I suffered from the messiah complex, Trisha, it seemed, suffered from the “reverse messiah complex,” a state of mind in which a husband or wife places godlike or messiah-sized expectations on his or her spouse. When Trisha experienced loneliness, anxiety, stress, fear, depression, insecurity, or uncertainty, she’d look to me to fill her needs. And because of my messiah complex,
I looked to solve those things in her. But what this led to was an accumulation of unmet expectations.

TRISHA:

In the movie
Groundhog Day
, the main character relives the same day over and over again. This is how our marriage began to feel. Six months into our time at our new church, the youth ministry had spread like wildfire, and not only did the students love our style, but their parents did as well.

But it was like we had only hit the snooze button on the year before, and now we were waking up to the same situation. Conflict arose between Justin and the senior pastor at the church. Justin was young and driven and didn’t mind pushing the boundaries. He was an “ask for forgiveness, not permission” type of leader. The senior pastor had been at the church for ten years and had settled into a comfortable pace of ministry. He received Justin’s ideas as a threat to his leadership.

I don’t think Justin intended to challenge our pastor’s authority—at first. But the defensive response Justin received altered his motives, and he did start questioning our pastor’s leadership and desire to see the church grow. When Justin realized that things at the church were not likely to change, his response was to look for another opportunity. He talked about needing to move again, but this time I was not enthusiastic about the change. I knew that another ministry wouldn’t bring us to the Promised Land—just another desert.

One thing we
were
on the same page about was trying for baby number two. Since Micah had been a surprise, it was fun to “try” for the second baby, and it kept my mind from fully engaging with the possibility that we could be moving again.

Unbeknownst to Justin, we got pregnant on our first try. Because Justin’s birthday was just a week away, I thought this would be an epic birthday present to give him. With some close
friends at my side, I rented a limo and surprised Justin at the church. I expected him to be stoked to find out that we were going into the city in style and that he was being lavished with such love . . . but he wasn’t. When we shouted, “Surprise!” the only thing he could say was, “Where did you get the money to do such a thing!” Strike number one!

I thought it best to give him his gift in the limo to break the awkwardness of his reaction to my first surprise. I reached into my purse, grabbed a bulky envelope, and handed it to Justin. My girlfriends and I were so giddy, we could hardly contain ourselves. Justin, still puzzled by the whole experience, took the envelope, opened it, and pulled out a positive pregnancy test and a card that said, “We are having a baby!”

I had imagined that Justin would well up with tears, embrace me, and whisper sweetly into my ear, “God is so amazing. . . .” Instead, I received a “What you talkin’ about, Willis?” look. He looked upset, as if I had gotten pregnant so soon just to make his life difficult. If my girlfriends could shoot fire from their eyes, I’m certain Justin would have become toast that day. Strike number two!

Six months later, six months pregnant, we moved—again. By this point in our marriage,
moving
had become a four-letter word. Six moves and four ministries (including our part-time ministries in college) in twenty-eight months was our current record at this point. Each move seemed to have some rhyme or reason, so, I reasoned, what would one more move hurt—especially knowing that this time we were moving to a house! A house with a backyard, sidewalks, and beautiful, large trees.

Although the house was a great cover-up to eventually convince myself that
this
move could be the Promised Land, I slowly drifted into a mind-set that conditions and expectations needed to be met in order for me to move forward in anything. If Justin wanted me to move, then he needed to move me to something better. If he wanted me to be involved in his ministry, he needed to find a babysitter and the money to make it happen. I became an expert in keeping
score. No longer was I dreaming limos, babies, and partnership for our relationship. Rather, if-then statements became my guide. They were my new way of communication. Countless instances of Justin’s not doing “this” so I could respond with “that” allowed our marriage not only to drift into ordinary but to stay camped out there.

JUSTIN & TRISHA:

EXTRAORDINARY JOURNEY, ORDINARY EXPECTATIONS

Reading through the life of Moses as recorded in Exodus, I (Trisha) am often dumbfounded by the epic step of faith God asks Moses to take to lead the Israelites out of Egypt. To get things started, God appears in a burning bush.
A. Burning. Bush.
I don’t know about you, but if I saw a bush on fire and heard a voice calling from it, my first response would be to call 911 and then Google the nearest mental hospital! If there was ever a way to start an extraordinary journey, this was the way to go. But God doesn’t stop with an awesome display of pyrotechnics. He continues his awesomeness by bringing plagues on Egypt, parting the Red Sea for the Israelites’ escape, purifying bitter water, and making food rain down from the sky. This is an extraordinary journey!