Recently I received a request from a young lady who will soon be a bride. She asked an excellent question for someone preparing to commit their life to another. She is a believer in Jesus Christ, so I have confidence that there will be power to forge a strong union if they both rely on Jesus throughout their years together.

Here was her question:

“How do you and your husband make it work when you guys believe the opposite things? Like him drinking or stuff like that.”

How, indeed.

Somehow Rick and I have progressed from broken individuals who were constantly wounding each other, most of it unintentional, to best friends. We are good as a team, but we do have diametrically opposed beliefs. We are not your typical married couple.

I had to think for about 24 hours how to answer her question. We have a young relative who got married only to find herself in divorce court within two months, so I am acutely aware that advice given right before a marriage needs to be raw and honest, not necessarily encouraging just for the sake of encouraging.

Because there may be other young women out there who are planning a wedding, I decided to share my response. Titus 2:3-4 gives clear instructions: “Likewise, teach the older women to be reverent in the way they live, not to be slanderers or addicted to much wine, but to teach what is good. Then they can urge the younger women to love their husbands and children.”  I do want to encourage younger women, but I want to encourage them appropriately, according to God’s word.

Here’s what I offered:

“Rick and I have different ways of handling our opposing points of view. For politics (he’s a Democrat and I’m an Independent who registers Republican to vote in the caucus), he tells people we just don’t discuss it anymore. I would, but he gets angry. But we can still laugh about the fact that we’re canceling out each other’s votes when the day arrives. 🙂

For matters of faith, I was much more vocal about his choice to reject Jesus early in our marriage. But there came a point when I knew he was done listening. So, I took the words of 1 Peter 3:1-6 to heart and stopped trying to convince him with words. I pray for opportunities a lot, and every few years, he’ll suddenly gain a strong interest in what the Bible teaches. I take advantage of those opportunities and try not to get discouraged when his interest wanes.

In regard to his drinking and other vices, we struggled a lot in our earlier years. Thankfully, his drinking nearly stopped about five or six years ago. For a period of time, I was attending Al-Anon meetings to cope with it. And he knew. We discussed it. I told him I had lived my entire life with alcoholics and needed to learn how to deal with it in a healthy way. He accepted that. Between Al-Anon and Celebrate Recovery, I’ve learned that I cannot change him. And it’s not my job, so I leave it to the Holy Spirit. I used to worry that people would think I was OK with his drinking and drugs, but at some point, I stopped caring and again, left it in God’s hands.

God has done a big work in my heart a couple of different times throughout our marriage, healing the resentment I carried toward him and helping us both grow into a team instead of two people struggling against each other all the time. He truly is my best friend now, but it took a lot of years of surrendering to Jesus and obedience to pray for him and follow God’s lead, even when I didn’t like it.

In a nutshell, my advice is to lean into God and trust Him. Trust Him to change you, or the circumstances, or the other person. And don’t give up.”