MARRIAGE EXPECTATIONS MATTER

Chuck Crismier: What if you were to start your marriage all over again? What if you thought today, I'm going to get married? And as you get married, what are you going to do? Ladies, what are you going to do? Men, what are you going to do? Are you prepared? You say, what do you mean, prepared? What was I supposed to do to prepare? Aren't we just supposed to get married and everything works happily ever after? Well, maybe it worked that way for you in your marriage, but for most marriages, it doesn't work quite like that. For young people though that are getting married, I say young people because today, it used to be that people were getting married in their early twenties. Today, they're lucky to get married in their early thirties. Something's happening. They think they're getting ready, but maybe not. So today on Viewpoint, we talk about this matter of being a newlywed. Now you may think that's strange because you've been married for 20 years, 30 years, 50 years, whatever it is. But what if you were thinking about being a newlywed today? I'm not talking about someone other than your current spouse. I'm talking about the mind and heart set. What would you do differently? What should have been done differently? And is there something, if you were thinking about starting your existing marriage all over again, what might that look like? What kind of expectations would you have? Have you communicated what those expectations are? Or are you still talking about what the expectations are and you've been married for 30 years? Today on Viewpoint, we have a special guest joining us from Wisconsin. The reason he has to join us today from Wisconsin to talk about our marriage is because marriages in Wisconsin have been seriously disrupted by a massive tornado. So he's all shook up just like Elvis was. And today on Viewpoint, we're going to try to settle things down with Mike Novotny from Wisconsin with his book Newlywed: A Christian Guide for Loving in Year One. Mike, it's good to have you in the program, my friend.
Mike Novotny: Chuck, that is the most creative introduction I have ever seen. Thanks for having me.
Chuck Crismier: Well, look, when we've been on the air now for 31 years, an hour a day live, confronting the deepest issues of America's heart and home, you've got to do something a little different. And unfortunately, that's one of the problems that newlyweds don't realize, and that is every day can't be the same. You've got to have some freshness in your marriage. And one of the things that my wife and I have been learning after 60 years now is that freshness is the lifeblood of the marriage. You've got to keep things fresh. What say you?
Mike Novotny: I love that. I just heard that you celebrated 60 years last week. Do I have that right?
Chuck Crismier: That's correct.
Mike Novotny: Well, as much as I love the book that I've gotten to write, I think I'm just going to listen to you for the next hour. So if you're ready to monologue in the wisdom of 60 years, that's pretty amazing and rare. So congratulations to you and your bride.
Chuck Crismier: Well, I'll tell you, Mike, on our 50th, we decided that we were going to memorialize that experience by writing a book. It's the smallest book that we've ever written. It's called Lasting Love: Enduring Secrets for Marital Success. And we put in there a motto that had guided us during our marriage, and it had been a very, very strong anchor for our marriage as a Christian couple for many, many years. So we decided that we would present that to the world, Lasting Love: Enduring Secrets for Marital Success. But you're getting started all over again here with Newlywed, and you've been married for what, 24 years?
Mike Novotny: Yeah, almost 23. Yeah, a lot of the push to write this actually came out of some interviews that I did. I sat down with 20 newlyweds from our church. I used our church software, I pulled up a report, who's been married in our congregation less than a year or two, and asked them out for coffee. Then they were kind enough to just let me pepper them with really personal questions about communication and faith and in-laws and connection and intimacy and finances. And kind of what I wanted to see was was there a gap between what they thought marriage was going to be and what it actually turned out to be.
Chuck Crismier: Was that true for you and your marriage?
Mike Novotny: Oh my goodness, yes. How this is a four hour show? Is that how much we have to talk about that?
Chuck Crismier: Well, it could be that, it could be that, but we're going to try to distill it. You know as a good trial lawyer, I have to keep my witness on track here. So you know you're talking to a pastor when you give him a time limit. Well, listen, what would you say if a lawyer became a pastor and they've merged them together? Then you're in deep trouble, right?
Mike Novotny: Yeah, that would be terrible. Yeah, that was certainly true for me. Kim and I got married young, so she was my first ever girlfriend. We met college freshman year, married right after graduation. And honestly, all that I can remember from our premarital counseling at our little Bible college was when it comes to intimacy, men are like microwaves and women are like crockpots.
Chuck Crismier: Well, that has been the famous or infamous phrase that has defined the difference between men and women since time immemorial, hasn't it?
Mike Novotny: Oh, yes. But there were just so many things that Kim and I love each other, we loved our Lord, but we just had not expressed our expectations about a hundred different things. And it wasn't that I was right and she was wrong or vice versa. It's just that we were operating out of different scripts that we hadn't yet expressed to each other.
Chuck Crismier: All right. How did you grow up? Give us a little background about what it was like for you to grow up. What kind of family was that?
Mike Novotny: Yeah, I was blessed. So I grew up in Green Bay, Wisconsin, and mom and dad who loved me deeply. My dad is a churchgoing guy now, but he wasn't. So back then my mom kind of raised me in the faith. And as much as I was, I can remember in my like grade school yearbooks circling the pictures of the girls that I liked. And that was like half my prayer list as a very young Christian boy of, Dear God, please let these girls like me as much as I like them.
Chuck Crismier: Well, it's a good thing God didn't answer all those prayers, right?
Mike Novotny: I should have been praying for like poverty or the salvation of unreached people groups, but no, I was praying about Amanda from my first grade class. So yeah, you know, raised by a solid Christian mom, so I was grateful to know and believe the gospel from my earliest memories. But just didn't have a lot of relationship experience. So yeah, when I met Kim at college, that was all new for me, just navigating life and love and communication.
Chuck Crismier: There's nothing wrong with that, Mike. In fact, that might be the better thing. That might be the better thing because we don't want inappropriate experiences out there. Why not start fresh?
Mike Novotny: Yeah, I wonder if God had mercy on me.
Chuck Crismier: I think he did. He had mercy on me too, Mike, because I think I only had two dates before. Well, no, I had more than that, but there was one girlfriend and then my wife. And so I was not the voice of experience as you might say. I grew up in a pastor's home. And for better for worse, I grew up in a pastor's home, and so that was the environment. My father was the pastor, my wife was the pastor in the home. And I find that generally speaking, women tend to be the leaders, the spiritual leaders in most Christian homes today. Men have defaulted in large measure. So what was your wife expecting? Did she think you were going to be a spiritual leader in the home?
Mike Novotny: Yeah, you know, I think I'm kind of wired for leadership in that way. So that one wasn't as much of a struggle for us. It was just realizing who we were, how we were wired when it came to communication, intimacy and other things. Those were the things that we were about to discover the hard way and have to learn our way through.
Chuck Crismier: Friends, the book is called Newlywed: A Christian Guide for Loving in Year One. But this is for all years. That's what we're talking about here today. If you have a newlywed, they've got to get this book. Otherwise you need it. Welcome back to Viewpoint, I'm Chuck Crismier. It's conversation is always with ever increasing conviction, talk that transforms. Today we're talking about marriage with a new friend, Mike Novotny, a pastor there in Wisconsin. And Mike, I'm going back 10 years to the celebration of our 50th. I'm looking at a newsletter that we put out called The Miracle of Marriage at that time. And this was in the summer of 2016, and here's what I wrote in part in that newsletter. Marriage is a miracle of divine design. Unfortunately, it's plainly clear that the prevailing winds of our time globally, yet more pervasively in so-called Christian Western world, are not favorable to sailing the good ship marriage. A tsunami of relational brokenness swept across the North American continent, precipitated by an unprecedented moral and spiritual truth quake in the 1960s, decoupling marriage and family from their moral and spiritual foundations. The unrelenting aftershocks for two generations have devastatingly fractured not only the family, but supporting faith itself. In the midst of the fray, marriage though remains a miracle of divine design. It does. And happy marriages begin when we marry the ones we love, they blossom when we love the ones we marry. So that's just a little distillation from that newsletter, Mike, going back 10 years, celebration of our 50th. You've got a landmark coming up for the 25th, don't you?
Mike Novotny: Yeah, coming up here in a couple of years. So I was late to plan my 10 year anniversary, so I ended up finding a hotel room in New York to take my wife to that I found out only had bunk beds in it. So I got to redeem myself after the bunk bed debacle of my 10 year. So yes, pray for wisdom and clarity and that could be a better time.
Chuck Crismier: You're going to need it, brother. And whatever you do, do not forget your next anniversary. Do not forget it. That is the unpardonable sin. Unpardonable, you heard me, didn't you?
Mike Novotny: You can't write a book on marriage and then forget your own anniversary or it's done. Amazon should take it off its page.
Chuck Crismier: So what was it like for your wife when Kim met you, what was her background?
Mike Novotny: Yeah, she was blessed to grow up in a really strong Christian home. So her mom and dad were happily married, her mom was a Christian school teacher, her dad was a businessman who was passionate about his faith. So we were both, it strikes me that we had happy marriage but some challenges, and yet we both came from safe environments where Jesus was pretty central. So that little data point reminds me even if you come from a solid background, clarifying those expectations, talking through some really specific questions is so important. And if you come from a more complicated background in history, even more so. Just relying on God, seeking him and having what might be an awkward conversation at first. But I love to say on the other side of the awkwardness is something awesome, and that's what God has waiting for us.
Chuck Crismier: Well, it's said that broken expectations are actually the foundation or the reason for most divorces. One way or the other, broken expectations are the reason for most divorces. And when you look at it over since 1966 when we were married, you look at the divorce history starting from 1968 in Southern California with Ronald Reagan, the governor then, inaugurating the first marriage law that he said was the worst thing that he ever did. Ever since then, marriage began to fall apart, and we watched it happen from Southern California all across the country. It not only fell apart in the country, it fell apart in the church. And we began to see the God is love movement but forgot about the God of justice and judgment. And so things began to collapse across the country and love became a feeling, but it wasn't laid out, it wasn't lived out in faith and in truth and in love. And so marriage took some very, very hard breaks for the past 40, 50 years. So here we are now, you've been married for 24, right?
Mike Novotny: Yep, almost.
Chuck Crismier: 24, I've been married for 60. We've seen a lot of hard situations going on across the country. We've seen it happening in the church. And marriage has fallen on very, very hard times. So this is a very critical, critical subject. I believe that God has marriage on his mind. What do you think?
Mike Novotny: Yes. I'm actually getting ready to preach on Ephesians chapter five in just a couple weeks here.
Chuck Crismier: Uh oh, watch out, ladies.
Mike Novotny: And and men. Yeah, and just as I'm reading about the humility called for of a wife and a husband, husbands love your wives as Christ loved, a man who came to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. And this little rhyme, through all the ups and downs of my own marriage, this little rhyme has just proven true time and time again that Kim and I often say. And the rhyme is, Me first makes a mess, but you first makes us blessed.
Chuck Crismier: Whoa, repeat that again. That's worth repeating.
Mike Novotny: Yeah, so Me first, whenever I'm thinking about me, what do I want, how do I feel, whenever I get fixedated on Mike, me first makes a mess, but you first, how are you doing, how can I serve you, you first makes us blessed.
Chuck Crismier: That's a wonderful thing. And I remember, it's causing me to remember the words of my own wife just within the last few days talking about when we first met on the front steps of the church that she was a member of. One Sunday evening I came to visit that church. My grandparents had been virtual charter members there. And here she was standing on the front steps of the church, my own personal greeter. And the rest was history. And I said, Well, sweetheart, why was it that you were so initially attracted to me? She said, It's because you wanted to talk about your Bible and how important it was. She says, That was the very first thing you wanted to talk to me about and I knew you were the guy.
Mike Novotny: Yeah, that's beautiful. Yeah, I think when Kim and I got married real quickly, some similar, my pastor had that classic illustration of the marriage triangle where God is at the apex on top and each of us are on the bottom. And just if we seek him first, we worry about, especially newlyweds planning a wedding, like, oh, what about the guest list? And what about the menu? And what about the dress? And what about the flowers? And what about the bachelor party? And what about the honeymoon and everything else?
Chuck Crismier: And what about the $50,000 it's going to cost you that you could have used to build your first house?
Mike Novotny: That's it. And you're worried and set about so many things. And here's Jesus in love just saying, but if you seek first God, if you're reaching for your Bible before you reach for your wedding website, these things that you worry about will be given to you as well.
Chuck Crismier: All right, well, I want to ask you some questions because we've been kind of joking around a little bit here, but we're talking about a very serious subject here. And newlyweds are not prepared for the most part. They have no clue, they've got starry eyes, and they have expectations that probably are not very realistic. What were the if you were to lay out, Mike, two or three things that you think were the greatest downfalls of your expectations as to what this marriage you were entering into was going to be, what would they be?
Mike Novotny: The top two or three. Number one, my spouse deep down is just a prettier version of me. They think like I think, they feel loved by the things that I feel loved, they communicate in the way that I want to communicate. And until you've discovered the unique part in the body that God has made your spouse, you're never going to understand how to love them or how to communicate with them.
Chuck Crismier: Wow. So you expected her, Kim, to be just like you?
Mike Novotny: Yes. Except she didn't look like you, thank the Lord for that, right? Thank the Lord. Yeah, I mean, I remember it's common knowledge now, but the Love Languages has become a popular thing to talk about. And physical touch was my love language. So I would want to hold her hand, I would want to offer her a shoulder massage. And I remember the first time I asked her, can you know, can I give you a back rub? And she said no. And I thought to myself, I have never turned down a back rub in my entire existence. So wow, this woman must feel energized by different things and feel connected in different ways.
Chuck Crismier: Wow, that had to be a serious broken expectation. Especially since the Beatles in 1966 when we were married wrote the song I Want to Hold Your Hand.
Mike Novotny: Indeed. Apparently not. That was only for some people depending on your love language or self. Okay, so she wasn't into hand holding. A little bit, she was, just not in the same way that I was. Whether it's communication or physical touch or intimacy things, just realizing your spouse is not you and the great journey you're about to go on is to get your PhD in the person you married.
Chuck Crismier: And a couple of other things. What are a couple other things that stand out in terms of expectations that just didn't match?
Mike Novotny: Yeah, I think a really common thing that often leads to confusion and division, arguments and even divorce is sexual expectations. Yeah. For me a sad, Kim was a virgin when we got married, I was a virgin, but sadly I brought in way too many years of a pretty deep struggle with pornography. Yeah, I think if I'm being candid, I think one of the greater damages that all that porn use did was convincing me that sex was supposed to be easier. That sparks were supposed to fly and supposed to be a little different than what it really was. Yeah, it was. And so I ended up being unintentionally impatient with sex. I thought something was wrong with us when it wasn't. I'd just been kind of sexually educated by a fictional version instead of the beautiful, covenantal gift that God made it to be. So yeah, that was the toughest thing that we've been through in our marriage that required some counseling and resetting of expectations and understanding each other a lot better.
Chuck Crismier: That takes some real courage to be able to open up with that since 30% of America's pastors admit to having a problem with pornography. And 70% of Christian men admit to having a problem with pornography. And believe it or not, Mike, 34% of Christian women admit to having a problem with their forms of pornography. So these pornographic images and experiences set forth a pattern that is impossible to meet. In fact, it's not even godly, is it?
Mike Novotny: Yeah, it definitely is not. And I think what happened with me and Kim was I thought, well, why isn't this going like it should? And so I ended up pressuring Kim and I remember just like asking her sometimes like, are you okay? Is anything wrong? She's like, yeah, I think I'm okay. Why do you do something not wrong with me? And you know, if there's one thing that can kind of kill especially a woman's desire is feeling pressured and burdened instead of being able to relax knowing that you're loved and accepted. So pornography isn't just a danger for putting twisted images in our mind or extreme expectations, but it's just that the devil is such a deceiver. And I think he deceived me with that subtle lie, like you love each other, you're attracted to each other, this should be easier than this, so what's wrong with you? And that little seed grew into something that we had to root out like a bad weed in the garden of our marriage.
Chuck Crismier: Lasting love can be a dream come true. Yet love requires more than a dream or those loving feelings we so much desire. In fact, if you don't get it right, it could become a nightmare. And that's what we want to avoid. We want to make sure that our marriages please the Lord and are pleasing to one another. So our special guest today on Viewpoint, Mike Novotny. What's the derivation of your last name, Mike?
Mike Novotny: It's kind of ancient Bohemia, so the border between Germany and the Czech Republic.
Chuck Crismier: So you're Bohemian. Apparently, that's what my dad tells me. We won't go into what that means, I'm not sure. But in any event, your book is not Bohemian. In fact, it's a wonderful book and very necessary. You've got a lot of trigger points in here with your various chapters. 14 chapters that are easy, easy to read. One of the things that troubles a lot of married couples particularly initially, in fact, it goes on, it's ongoing, and that is the matter of in-laws. Was that a problem for you?
Mike Novotny: Oh, man, I was so blessed with a great mother and father-in-law. They were generous to us in all kinds of ways. So yeah, they were different. But in those 20 interviews that I did with the newlyweds, that was something that surprised me just learning to love your parents and to honor your spouse's parents and yet still create this brand new distance that the Bible sets up when it says a man must leave his father and mother and be united to his wife. So what I discovered is that some couples had trouble leaving, their parents were way too involved in decision making. And then I found other couples that were very comfortable leaving and being independent, but they forgot to honor their father and mother. And so we really had to work on that tension. Can you hold on to both of these biblical words? I'm going to leave and start this new family, and yet at the same time, I'm going to honor those who sacrificed so much to raise me.
Chuck Crismier: That is so critically important. And I tell you, my wife and I in counseling some couples just recently have found this to be a preeminent issue. It's especially hard when a man cannot leave his mother or father. You know there was when I grew up, there was a saying, maybe you're familiar with it. He is 20 and 11, 2 times 6 and 2 times 7, he's a young thing and cannot leave his mother. In other words, he's 54 years old and still can't leave his mother. That's a serious problem for a wife, isn't it?
Mike Novotny: You know, I think I used to be harder on in-laws until I had my own kids. My daughters, Brooklyn and Maya are 18 and 16. And I start to think like, I love them so deeply and we have crafted habits and rhythms and traveling and vacation and during the holidays, the things that we do. And then to think that they could meet someone in a couple years and get married and suddenly like that guy gets to outvote me? Like I put in all these years and we crafted this beautiful family and now he gets the deciding vote. So I start to see in-laws aren't outlaws, they're not bad guys for the most part or enemies. They're people who deeply love the spouse that we have just married. And so you can understand the tension why a parent or an in-law would think, well, we've kind of figured out what's best with this person, and now there's not just another vote, but a deciding vote that stepped in. So yeah, couples really need to communicate with lots of humility to get through that.
Chuck Crismier: There were tensions on both sides of our families. We kind of laugh about it now, but it wasn't funny. My wife certainly felt that my parents didn't think she was right for their son so to speak. And her father didn't think I was right for her because I couldn't fix cars. And I was destined to be a lawyer and then to be a pastor and all those things and he couldn't even relate to those things. So these kinds of tensions can really set things off unfortunately. And if a this is where Ephesians 5 that you're getting ready to minister to your congregation, where each of you submitting yourselves to the other in the fear of God, wives submit yourselves to your husbands as under Christ and husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church. Now, there's a whole lot to be written in those words to express what they mean. But if we don't learn to do those things early on, we're going to be in deep trouble, aren't we?
Mike Novotny: Yes. Looking at that text, it's amazing to me how often the name of Jesus comes up. So it reminds me, even when we're talking about the practical submission and yielding and loving and respecting, Paul can barely go a verse in that deep section on marriage without bringing out the Lord. In fear of the Lord, as Christ loved the church, as you submit to the Lord. So I think if you're a follower of Jesus and hopefully both of you are, there is so much power. Like we follow a Savior who put us first. We follow one who humbled himself and became obedient even to death on a cross. And so when our eyes are first going vertical to see God who's been so gracious with us and so humble, then we're ready to look horizontal, whether it's to my mother-in-law or to my wife. And instead of putting myself first, I'm trying to imitate the humility of Jesus. So yeah, I just love that the gospel is my forgiveness and it's my motivation to be the kind of man that God wants me to be.
Chuck Crismier: Isn't it interesting that that passage there begins with each of you humbling yourselves in the fear of the Lord? The whole concept of the fear of the Lord has fallen on very, very hard times in our generation. When I grew up, the term a God-fearing man was the most common way that people would refer to a man who at least was a strongly moral person and his word was his bond and so on. He was deemed to be a God-fearing man. Today, that has fallen on such hard times that over the past 30s, I've asked pastor after pastor on this program, I've had over 4,000 Christian leaders on this program in 31 years, Mike. And I've asked pastor after pastor, when was the last time, can you remember in the last 30 years anyone using that phrase, a God-fearing man? And you know they couldn't? We have completely abandoned the concept of the fear of the Lord. If you don't start out with the fear of the Lord in your marriage, you're in deep trouble, I think. What say you?
Mike Novotny: Yeah, I mean, if we define fear, I love the biblical term of just awe and the most immense respect. When I go to the Grand Canyon, I have a fear of the Grand Canyon. It's not that I want to stay far, far away from it, I just have this awe and grandeur and such respect for what it is.
Chuck Crismier: But if you really had that kind of awe and respect for God, you'd obey him. But the word obey has become the most hated word in the church according to many pastors. So there's our problem. And if you don't obey because of the fear of the Lord, your marriage is doomed from the beginning. You're not going to, I mean, you used to say in the marriage agreement, pledge, you love and obey. Okay. You start with loving and obeying God, and in doing that, you're going to wives submit yourselves to your husbands as under the Lord, husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church. And the wife is going to obey her husband as long as he doesn't lead her away from the Lord. So those things are largely missing, aren't they?
Mike Novotny: Yeah, they are. I think there's these little three things and you're getting right to the heart of it. If we start with the gospel, just this crazy gracious forgiving of a former porn addict like myself, loving us at the bottom when our hearts are just amazed by grace, we end up with this fear of God and we want to obey him. And that leads us, it just sets us up so well in marriage that I'm not marrying you just to get something out of this. I'm marrying you with the intention that I want to love you as I have first been loved. So yeah, if we skip the gospel, we'll skip the fear of the Lord, and if we skip the fear of the Lord, we'll skip the humble obedience that leads to a great thriving marriage.
Chuck Crismier: That brings up another aspect. When my wife met me, she thought that I was going to be the spiritual leader of the home. That's what she expected. After all, my father was a pastor, her father was not the spiritual leader of their home. She had seen other families where the men were the spiritual leaders of their home and that was the number one desire that she had, that her husband would be the spiritual leader of her home. So when she heard me talking about my Bible and so on, she was so thrilled and thought, Wow, I have finally gotten what my heart's desire was. Well, what happened was that my faith was very private. So that when we got married, I didn't spend time with her, shall we say, in the Word individually. We went to church every week, two or three times a week. And so she knew we believed the Bible, we talked about it, but I didn't include her in private. Until about 30 years ago. And the Holy Spirit spoke to my heart. She said, Son, you have been getting up at 5:00, 5:30 in the morning for years and years and years, it's been quality time in the Word. Your family knows it, your kids know that, your wife knows that, but you've never done it with her. And so I took the lead and I said, from now on, we're going to get up the first thing we're going to do. I've got the coffee fixed at night, we're going to get up, we're going to sit down, we're going to spend quality time in your word every single day without fail. And we have done that with probably no more than a handful of exceptions in 30 years. My wife says it's the most powerful thing that ever happened in our marriage. But it was missing for the first 25 years.
Mike Novotny: Yeah, what do you think was so powerful? I mean, what can you tell us what kind of practical difference it made when you did that side by side?
Chuck Crismier: Yeah, first of all, she says, finally, finally, I got the kind of communication connection that I've been yearning for for all these years. Not just talking about mechanical things going on in the house and different business kinds of things, but talking about us and talking about applying the word in our family, in our lives and so on. She felt there was an intimacy of communication there around the Word, around the Lord. And so it satisfied that. She said it's the most important part of our whole day, and she says that after 30 years of doing this every single day. Do you know, Mike, that even when I was out of town for whatever reason, we still did it. We did it via cell phone and every morning that's what we expected to do and that's what we did, without fail.
Mike Novotny: That is beautiful. Yeah, I have this theory that you really love conversations with another person when you check four boxes and the boxes are me, you, good, and bad. That I've kind of noticed that as a pastor when people walk through the doors on Sunday, like, why am I excited to talk to some people? And I realize when great conversations you talk about you and me and the good and the bad. There you go. And I have a hunch when your Bible's open, there's prayers and praise and confession, there's good, bad, there's you, me. So I think you just kind of discovered that recipe as you opened the scriptures together.
Chuck Crismier: Ephesians 5, right? This is supposed to be a glimpse of the relationship with Jesus and his people. And so it makes sense that the devil would come hard at marriages, that he's picking his battle plan to attack this earthly glimpse of a heavenly reality would be top on his list. So it doesn't shock me that marriage is hard, it doesn't shock me. What did the old prophecy say? Strike the shepherd and the sheep will scatter. So for those of us who are in positions of leadership, whether that's a pastor or otherwise, just knowing that having a thriving marriage, having the time and energy to pour into your spouse so that they feel loved and respected, this is not like extra credit Christianity. This is probably at the heart of your calling.
Mike Novotny: Exactly. This is the foundation of everything. It's got to be lived out. If we don't live out our Christian faith in the context of our marriages, then what other environment would we live it out in?
Mike Novotny: A thousand percent. And some people feel guilty about that, they get so infatuated pleasing people who don't even know their middle names that they neglect to break bread and be home for dinner with the person that they vowed to love for better or worse.
Chuck Crismier: You have an interesting thing, one of the chapters is when you envy someone else's marriage. Now, early on, that is very possible. In fact, we had exactly that situation happen to us when we were in California early on. It was about our seventh year of marriage and we owned our first house, it was a tiny little house on the other side of the tracks, but it had a guest house on it that we rented out. It was rented out to a couple who he was going to Fuller Seminary there in Pasadena, California. And one day his pretty wife came to my wife and said, Kathy, why can't my husband be more like your husband? Her husband was a very tall guy, soft spoken, loved to play his guitar and sing soft songs, that kind of guy he was. But she was kind of a she was a blonde but very strong, very not only beautiful, but powerful in her ways. So she comes to my wife and she says, why can't my husband be more like your husband? And here was my wife's response, because you'd kill him. In other words, my husband you didn't marry a guy like my husband or you'd have some real problems because you guys would be in real fisticuffs. They were both Christians, you know, and I can understand why she was so troubled. Why would someone envy somebody else's marriage? I guess that's the reason because you see some dynamic there that you wish was in your marriage, but it isn't. What do you do?
Mike Novotny: Yeah, it's really easy to get used to your spouse's strengths and to get fixated on the strengths they don't have. It's really easy to say, well this person is responsible and organized and I can rely on them, but oh, look at this other person is so spontaneous and fun and my husband isn't like that.
Chuck Crismier: And that's what happens in the workplace. A young gal gets off into work instead of in the home and some guy there is showing her affection and seems to have characteristics her husband doesn't have. She's infatuated and the rest is history. They adulterize and break up the marriage.
Mike Novotny: Yeah, and then you find out, oh, this new guy has some massive flaws too. So just realizing, you know, just like the nose can smell but it can't see and hear, and just like the eyes can see but they can't smell or hear, you married a person that has some gifts but not all of them. And you could be frustrated for the rest of your marriage wishing that they had all the parts and they were good at all the things, but that's not how life is. And neither are you, for the record.
Chuck Crismier: I think it's so important for people to understand their personalities and what makes them tick. There are things that are available now to newlyweds that were not available when we got married. So many things are available now that were not available to us when we got married. We had to learn the hard way and we spent a great deal of time going to various conferences and so on to try to understand, to move on. And what's interesting is that after 8, 9 years of marriage, my wife Kathy came to me one day and she says, Chuck, I don't have any more feelings for you and it scares me. She didn't come in anger, she was kind of broken about it and it scares me. Well, here's the problem. I had put her through college while I was working full time and going to law school at night. So where's the time? We didn't have time together talking, thinking, thanking, tenderly touching, and she felt all of that. So I have no more feelings for you and it scares me. Well, I had a choice at that time. Am I going to say, well, that's your problem, or the or is what I chose. I went before the Lord and I said, Okay, Lord, what do I do? How do I understand what she's saying and how do I respond? And he sent me on a journey right when I was preparing for the State Bar in California to get up early every morning and memorize the Sermon on the Mount. All three chapters. And as a result of that, the Holy Spirit began to do from the inside out what I had been trying to do from the outside in, and the rest was history. It changed everything. My attitude. Attitude is the foundation of it all, isn't it?
Mike Novotny: Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. That is beautiful.
Chuck Crismier: It's a great book. I wish we could go through all the little details, but we can't. Thanks for joining us, get a copy of the book Newlywed in your hands. Friends, it's not just for newlyweds, it's for longtime-weds. It'll stir back in our minds and hearts to help repair some of those broken places and help us to get things right so that the rest of our marriage is a beautiful history. God bless and be a blessing.