Honoring the Past While Moving Past It

Not Your Parents' Marriage: Bold Partnership for a New Generation
by Jerome Daley

Find God's Unique Shape for Your Marriage

It's not just the two of you and God. The truth is, you bring your family into your relationship in more ways than you realize. Yet God has plans for your marriage that differ from the expectations of your parents' generation. Looking at the past, how do you know what to jettison and what to keep as your own?

Jerome and Kellie Daley have wrestled with the tough questions about which spouse is responsible for what and why, how last night's fight could help you love each other more, and what it really means to leave your parents and become full partners in marriage. As you practice the freeing biblical truths about marriage, you discover that many of the practicalities that worked for previous generations are a poor fit in your relationship.

Not Your Parents' Marriage examines God's dreams for marriage today, based on the scriptures and including honest dialog, fun questionnaires, and space for journaling. It's time to honor what God has done in the past while unlocking the creativity and passion that are unique to your relationship.

Whether you are engaged, married, or somewhere on the way, God wants to do a new thing in your relationship. Are you ready to experience it?

Navigating the Generational Shift in Marriage

"Who wants to drive?" A voice piped up from the circle of grad students in front of the dorm. I took off in a jog to the parking lot a quarter mile away and returned in my gunmetal gray Isuzu Trooper. Trying to live up to the rugged, adventurous image of my truck, I chirped the tires as I approached the swelling crowd of guys and girls awaiting a ride to the ice-cream store.

I ( Jerome) had been on the seminary campus for only a week, and I was relishing all the new experiences and faces that made up the tight-knit community of five hundred in this South Carolina sauna called Columbia. Girls and guys started piling into my SUV, and finally the front passenger door opened. No, it can't be! Things like this only happen in movies. But there she was-an auburn-haired beauty I had met just briefly before. She slid into her seat with surprising grace, which wasn't so easy in this highmounted truck.

I think that's the thing I noticed first about Kellie ... well, okay, maybe not the first thing but close: she had this quiet grace about her. Nothing snooty or put-on, it was patently authentic. What do you call it ... bearing? poise? To me it communicated that she was a lady, that she had confidence and self-respect. It also represented something of a subtle challenge ... the man who would win her affection would have to earn it.

That's where it began for us, a blurred rocket ride that moved us faster than the speed of thought to the steps of Kellie's home church a mere six months later-where time slowed to a surreal slow motion as I slid a golden band on the third finger of her left hand.

Wow.

Now, fifteen years later, we are very different people than the ones who squeaked out those celestial vows. Did we have even a clue then? Yeah, a clue... but not much more. How do you begin such an uncharted life? Getting married is at the same time the most natural and the most foreign step most of us ever take. What do you honestly have to go on? Besides the premarital workbook that you may have scribbled in incoherently in your love-drug buzz, where do you find guidance for the specific shape of your relationship? Even within a Christian context, how are you supposed to understand this mysterious creation called marriage? And once you're past the initial giddy awkwardness of it all, the question is still a valid one: what shape should your marriage take? What is the connection between the marriage you observed growing up and your unique shape as a couple? Should you follow your parents' example, or should you work hard at doing things differently? When you find that things aren't working, is it possible that you're stuck in structures and mind-sets that God never intended for you and your spouse to adopt? What are God's specific intentions for your marriage?

Marriage is the quest that takes you beyond the forms of your parents' relationship-no matter how good or bad-and into your own destiny, held in the heart of God and waiting to be unwrapped by you.

In the Beginning Was... Confusion

[Jerome] Let's start with where we began. Our marriage was born in a wonderful, romantic fog of excitement and anticipation. But within just a few months we had lost the foundation of oneness that is now so central to our vision of marriage. Inadvertently and subconsciously, I had already made a lot of decisions for our new life together before we were even married.

[Kellie] That's what I now find so hard to believe-that we didn't discuss our plans more. We were so in love we thought that everything would be okay, that everything would work itself out. We didn't think-or at least I didn't think-we needed to evaluate or question our future. It's funny... I don't even remember talking about it!

[Jerome] I think the thing we talked about most was that I wanted to continue my job as worship pastor at my local church... that it would be a great place for us to start our life together.

[Kellie] I don't even remember having that conversation! I think you felt that way because you were already doing it-you were already on staff, already leading the college group and leading worship. I got excited that we could lead the campus ministry together. That was what I envisioned for us. That's the way my head works: It's hard for me to think ahead and figure out how I'm going to feel about something or what it's going to look like until I'm actually in that situation.

[Jerome] Yeah, we sort of stumbled through all these "nondecisions" in our new life together. We had premarital counseling, but our minds were clouded by idealistic images that were disconnected from the grittier realities of life. We didn't formulate a plan for our new life or even our first year. Marriage is just so different, so "other" than anything we'd experienced before. It was hard to know what to anticipate. Maybe you can relate. Marriage might have seemed like a simple thing, a natural next step. You were so in love that you couldn't imagine not spending your lives together. And the details of being married-or, more specifically, what it meant for you and your spouse to live in the unique relationship that God called you to-was given little thought. Or marriage might have seemed just the opposite to you. Perhaps the models of marriage you had observed growing up lacked love and permanence, and the things that went into a good marriage were a mystery to you. So the idea of thinking intentionally about your marriage and how you wanted to fashion it was a daunting venture. Either way, entering into marriage without thinking through and discussing the particulars of the marriage is common. And it's only later that people realize that more intentional work is needed.

Copyright © 2006 by Jerome and Kellie Daley.

About the Author

Jerome and Kellie Daley cofounded oneFlesh Ministries after serving for ten years as worship pastor and leader of women's ministries in a local church. Through oneFlesh, they call people to pursue a life of intimacy with God and one another. Jerome is the author of Soul Space and When God Waits. He holds a master of arts in New Testament from Columbia Biblical Seminary, and Kellie holds a master of arts in educational ministries from the same institution. The Daleys live in Greensboro, North Carolina, with their three children.