Today’s gorgeous Equally Yoked post is written by Caris Adel, to her daughter. 

Dear A~

How can I give you advice on finding a husband, when how I found mine was exactly what the christian dating books say will happen, but with which I completely disagree?

I’m aware that the beginning of our story sounds crazy, as if I imagined it.  God picked out my husband and told me we would get married the second time I saw him.

Because our beginning is the exception instead of the rule, my first piece of advice is that you shouldn’t sit around hoping God finds you ‘the one’.  The rest of my thoughts come from having a relationship I couldn’t have imagined, but that I wouldn’t have any other way.

My hope for your marriage, if you have one, is that you would find someone who is a brick-puller.

There is truth that’s hiding

Behind every wall that surrounds us.

It takes a lifetime

To pull the bricks away. 

–Sleeping At Last

I hope you find someone who is confident enough to handle your soul excavation, but who is fragile enough to engage in his own.  Books and churches will probably tell you the man is to be the leader, and he needs to be strong and true and full of integrity.  They will say it is his job to be a mature enough christian to lead your family.

But we’ve found that to be too much pressure for one set of shoulders.  Years ago I was angry, because they said he shouldn’t confide in me, but in other men.

But this is our life.

If you get married, it will be your life.  You won’t marry an accountability group.

I want you to be a woman who pulls bricks away, and who can handle the weight of them.  I want your husband to be a man who can do the same.  Bear each other’s burdens equally.

As a firstborn, you are strong, stubborn, and independent – a leader.  You will need a strong man to be your equal, but he also needs to be soft, vulnerable, and you will have to remember that you can’t take the lead all the time.

A good marriage is one that alternates between pulling bricks and holding them.  He needs to be able to handle the truth of who you are, who you were, who you will become.  You must be able to return the honor.

Love is vulnerability and safety.  Dismantling walls is not for the faint of heart.  It takes a patient determination to enter brokenness to be willing to face what lies behind them.  Inherited or learned, demons are in all of us, and if you can embrace the fragility of being human, your love will be rooted in depths you wouldn’t have imagined when you said your vows.

Find someone who will pull the bricks away, even after you’ve rebuilt part of the wall.  No sledgehammers here to knock down the wall quickly and efficiently.

No, the love I wish for you is an inefficient partnership.  The one that knows it will take decades to know and know again, know anew, the person that you are.  An inefficient partner who is willing to submit to the slow process himself, showing his own wounds and weaknesses, even though he is told not to.  I want an emotional man for you, even though he is told men are simply logical.

I want someone who knows himself well enough to know what hides behind his walls, but who loves you enough to sacrifice his pride so you can join him behind it.  And I hope you are just as willing to have him hide with you behind yours when it’s a season of hiding.

I don’t know what kind of influence our marriage will have on you.  We don’t scream at each other, so I hope you don’t think that means we never fight.  You don’t hear the all-night conversations we have, or the way we both sometimes muffle our cries so we don’t wake you up.

But I hope you notice when those talks begin in quiet arguments in amongst the flurry of dinner and bed preparations.  I hope you know that even though I stay home, that is not your only option.  I hope the respect we have for each other comes through, and that you know we are both strong and weak in our own ways.

Someday, when you look back on all the years you spent with us, I hope our goal of equality will have been met, that we will have given you a vision of a healthy marriage, not a perfect one.

Yes, I hope for all the traditionally equal things for you – that your gifts and talents are respected and valued, even if they aren’t ‘feminine’ enough, and I hope you don’t end up with someone who has to prove his masculinity and demean you in the process.

But what I really wish for you in your marriage, is someone who is humble enough to simply be your best friend.

You will never arrive as a person.  You will not wake up one day, knowing it all and living it out just right.  There will always be new people, new situations, and new challenges to influence who you are.  Old wounds will resurface and new ones will be made.  Bricks pulled and bricks placed.  Walls dismantled and walls built.

My hope is that you find someone who does more pulling than building.

I pray you find your match, equality, and the joy and freedom it brings.

I love you.

Mom

Caris Adel is passionate about loving people, defending the oppressed, and being a voice for justice.  She’s been married for 11 years, and with 5 kids, somehow finds the time to write about affirming the humanity at www.carisadel.com.

Next week’s Equally Yoked post is from Eric Kerr-Heraly.

Want to contribute to the Equally Yoked series? Email Jenny at jennyraearmstrong@gmail.com.