Finding Your Shared Destiny

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

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Even among young adults, it's common to believe that it's the man's job to find his calling from God and then to find the woman he thinks should be his wife. He brings the woman into his world and says, essentially, "This is my calling. Can you be a part of it?" It's not always stated that directly, but there is the expectation that she will join his calling. There is little awareness of a shared calling and very little pursuit of what God is calling them to do together. When we met and got married, we didn't see our life's calling as a shared calling. Perhaps you didn't, either.

This grows out of a misunderstanding of Genesis 2, which we'll look at more closely later. But the germ of it is that in Genesis 1, God gave a mandate and spoke a destiny over Adam and Eve as a couple. It came to them jointly, as equal partners in destiny. And that gives context to the anchor verse for marriage, Genesis 2:24 (MSG): "Therefore a man leaves his father and mother and embraces his wife. They become one flesh." Whatever marriage is, it's about oneness! It isn't that the man has a destiny and the woman is left either to join in or to choose not to marry the guy. Instead, it's their destiny-given by God to both of them. The way you understand what together means will largely determine how you live out your marriage.

Your life together will also be shaped by the unique blend of your personalities and your gifting. Marriage isn't meant to look the same in every generation. In some ways your marriage may look very similar to your parents' marriage, and in other ways it may look completely different. Even within your own generation, the marriage relationship is meant to have a unique expression for every couple. But oneness-living together in complete partnership-is the one nonnegotiable. God wants to take you to the highest level of oneness possible!

Partnership does not mean that a man comes to his sense of destiny and then finds a woman to support his vision and care for his needs. Partnership means that God brings the two together to become one. A man and a woman were created specifically for each other, and when God aligns their paths, they have a shared destiny that they can fulfill only with each other. At the moment of their joining, their new, shared destiny is birthed. If a couple fails to understand the shared nature of their destiny, God's blessing in their lives will be hindered.

[Jerome] Destiny can't be discovered outside of community. Of course we are born as individuals, and we come into a sense of personal purpose related to who we are meant to be before marriage-the real Jerome and the real Kellie. These are foreshadowings of destiny.

[Kellie] I would call that self-discovery-the process of discovering who we are as individuals. For instance, when we come into marriage, we should already know our spiritual gifts, our strengths and weaknesses, and what motivates us. It's so much easier for God to communicate destiny to a husband and wife when they already know who they are.

[Jerome] Part of the beauty of marriage is that once God brings two people together, not only do they begin to discover their joint destiny, but they help each other to see the blind spots they have toward themselves. It's like looking into a mirror; you begin to see things about yourself that you didn't realize before. And that aids the process of understanding yourself and becoming who you are meant to be. But the further along we are on that journey before we get married, the more quickly we are able to build a healthy marriage.

A Wrinkle in Time

We hope that self-discovery and a shared destiny appeal to you. But it's possible that your parents have pursued very different priorities in their marriage. In between any two generations there usually is a shift in expectations, goals, priorities, and core desires for marriage. That's why it's important to look at your marriage in terms of what God is doing today; don't try to squeeze your relationship into a model that fit a past generation. God has given each of us a past to draw from, whether it was largely healthy or highly dysfunctional or somewhere in between. Marriages you observed while growing up, both positive and negative, tend to serve as defining models for your marriage. Most couples either try to replicate a marriage they admire, or they try to fashion the exact opposite of a destructive relationship they were exposed to.

The truth is you can learn from both the good and the bad that you observed in your parents' marriage (or marriages, as the case may be). We want to emphasize an attitude of honor toward the heritage we received. So as you look at your past, identify what should be honored, whether little or much. Honor and respect that and build on it. But don't allow your marriage to be completely defined by it.

God's purposes and basic principles for marriage don't change, but the applications and expressions of those biblical values change constantly and emerge in unique ways in every generation. Past generations were marked by husbands' feeling a keen responsibility to provide for their families. That is honorable, and it produced generations of hard workers. And while we honor the hard work and the deep sense of financial responsibility of those fathers, we also understand that they often had a very different idea of what it meant to be a father. Some men equated being a father primarily with being a provider, so many of these fathers were emotionally and physically distant from their children. Rearing the kids was thought to be the mother's responsibility. Fortunately, God has been calling husbands and wives to a wider understanding of his heart for how parents-fathers and mothers-nurture their children and care for each other. This is just one example of how God continually reveals more of his heart over time.

Both Kellie and I grew up in exceptional homes where our parents loved each other, loved their children, and modeled a desire for God's rule in the family. My parents broke new ground at the time by carefully guarding a weekly family night where we all played games, read books, and just hung out together. Kellie's parents intentionally limited their careers in the education field so they could give their family the best portion of their time and attention. Both families had the extraordinary foresight to recognize the heavy cost of allowing television to rule the home... and banned televisions from their houses! As a result, we both grew up interacting with our families instead of plugging in to the mind-numbing effect of the boob tube. Our fathers have faithfully honored and cherished their wives for more than forty years. Our mothers have loved and respected their husbands, served the church, and nurtured their children. Our parents led us into a personal discovery of Jesus Christ and the pursuit of his purpose for our lives. They taught us the value of personal purity and elevated our vision for marriage. This is the depth of the heritage we brought to our marriage. And beyond our parents, we inherited a deep contribution from prior generations. The last several generations modeled a tremendous commitment to work, community, and family. Their industry set an honorable example of sacrificing their own resources and ambitions for the sake of their children and their children's children. My ( Jerome's) grandfather, Hugh Daley, worked myriads of jobs in small businesses until he made enough money to buy his first hotel. Through wise investments and a Spartan lifestyle, he built his own company, from which he has tithed and given generously all his life.

Every generation seeks to right the "wrongs" of the past generation, both real and perceived. But each new generation also builds on the foundations that have been carefully fought for and defended. We owe a great debt to our parents, our grandparents, and all the generations who brought us to this moment.

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.