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Growth by Dependence
Contrary to what the world may say,
our mutual surrenders are what enrich us.
Wise parents nudge their children away from dependence toward
freedom. Their goal, after all, is to produce independent adults.
Lovers, however, choose a new kind of dependence: possessing
freedom, they gladly give it away. In a healthy marriage, one
partner yields to the other's wishes not out of compulsion, but
out of love. That adult relationship reveals what God seeks from
human beings: not the clinging, helpless love of a child who has
no choice, but the mature, freely given commitment of a lover.
I keep falling back on marriage as a picture of this mature
relationship because it is one I have lived in every day for
thirty years and one the Bible itself relies on. How, exactly, do
I "choose a new kind of voluntary dependence" within marriage? I
think of two major decisions Janet and I have made, both of which
led us to uproot and move to new locations.
The first time, we moved from the far suburbs to a downtown
neighborhood. After thirteen enriching years of city life, we
moved to a secluded site in Colorado, the opposite of Chicago in
every way.
It seems clear that we made the move to Chicago primarily for
Janet's sake and the move to Colorado primarily for mine. Janet
thrived in the city, building a fine church-based program that
ministered to the practical needs of senior citizens, most of them
poor, some of them homeless. City life, though, with its
pressures, incessant car alarms, and frenetic pace gradually
drained my creative energy. We chose Colorado as a more nourishing
environment for my introspective work of writing.
Both moves involved major adjustments, even sacrifices. Yet as
anyone in a healthy marriage knows, a couple only undertakes these
changes in a spirit of mutual consent. Because I work at home, we
have more freedom to make such choices than some people. But a
spirit of power ("I need a change of environment, and I'm moving
whether you like it or not") or retaliation ("You had your fun,
now I'm going to have mine") would spell doom. Neither of us would
dare impose such a decision on the other.
Marriage offers only one sure check on freedom abuse: love. In
any mature relationship, in fact, love sets the boundaries. I
could point to many times in which Janet has set aside her own
first preferences in favor of mine, and I have done the same for
her. Neither of us wins all the time. Yet because we are committed
to each other, we make the small and large adjustments necessary
to live together in peace, and try to exercise power and freedom
within the boundaries marked by love.
Thirty years of marriage have changed both Janet and me. We are
different people from the moonstruck lovers who said "I do" when
barely out of adolescence. She has taught me social skills, an
appreciation for plants, a compassion for the poor and lowly. I
have taught her to appreciate classical music, an awareness of
natural beauty, a zest for travel and physical exercise. Our
mutual surrenders have caused us to grow, rather than shrink.
Lovers understand
that a lasting relationship grows in the soil of trust and grace
and forgiveness, not law. Lovers know that love cannot be
commanded or compelled. By nature a lover wants what the other
person wants. When love requires personal sacrifice, it often
seems more like a gift: "Not my will but thine be done." Lovers
praise: I talk about my wife to others and boast of her
accomplishments not because I feel obligated but because I want
others to know her as I do. In these and other ways, I have
learned from marriage how a mature relationship with God may work.
Augustine described a good spiritual life as, simply, "well
ordered love."
The state God wants only comes about as a result of a faithful
relationship with him. We seek to please God, accept as our
highest goal to know and love him, make necessary sacrifices--and
in the process we ourselves change. Personal spirituality grows as
a byproduct of sustained interaction with God. In the end, we find
ourselves not just doing things that please God, but
wanting to do them.
Philip Yancey is the author of
Reaching for the Invisible God (Zondervan).
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