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Welcome to Love,
Listening, and Forgiveness:
[CBE's Marriage conference in Portland was wonderful. We got to meet many CBErs from around the country, laugh a lot, tear up a little, and enjoy some great and edifying fellowship in the Spirit. What follows is the written text of our talk -- too repetitive, too long, but we had fun doing it!] Jon: This is my friend, my lover, my wife, Carol Elaine Trott. Carol: And this is my best friend and husband, Jon Trott. I just want to say from the beginning that Jon may be here to speak... I'm not here to speak! I'm here to share! Jon: Carol's a bit insecure about speaking, so we decided she'd share and I'd speak. Carol: And Jon and I are reading this because he's a writer and is insecure about speaking, too! Jon: True. So Mimi suggested that we bring cheat sheets. Thanks, Mimi. Carol: Jon is an abstract, intellectual kind of guy. Well, sort of intellectual. He watches PBS... and COPS. He reads marriage books all the time--mostly the chapters on sex. He tells me all about these big ideas like "equality" and "mutual submission " -- and then he shushes me when I argue with him about our kids or taking out the trash. Sounds like a typical white western male to me! But though Jon may be typical when it comes to keeping our home clean or repairing things, he writes me love poetry. He may like dumb westerns, but he also likes chick flicks even more than I do, and he takes pretty good care of our romantic life. He prefers hanging out with me to any of his friends. Usually, if I cry at a movie, he starts crying too! Sometimes he starts it! Jon: I'm blushing. Carol, on the other hand, can frustrate a guy who fancies himself an enlightened evangelical husband. She enjoys many roles that some would call traditional--motherhood, baking the world's truly best apple pie, taking care of our room. She speaks a language of service, hospitality, deeds done for others. Sounds like a traditional wife to me! What's not traditional about her, though, is her full-time work with homeless women and children at our Leland House transitional shelter. Carol's role as mentor, counselor, caseworker, and co-director at Leland House exercises all the gifts God has given to her. Carol: Jon's a writer, and nowadays he's mostly putting stuff on the cstone.tv website. He also has a website dedicated to me, called highromance.com. A lot of his poetry is on there, and it is embarrassing. Jon: A little history may be in order. We've been married for thirteen years this month. Both of us are the "left over" partners from previous marriages. I came into our marriage with the custody of my two girls. Carol brought her twin boys. We also brought a whole lot of hurts and baggage into our new relationship. It seemed like we'd continually be booby trapping one another--and ourselves--due to these issues. I nick-named such occurrences "hauntings" and the issues our "ghosts." Carol: Jon, for instance, was very macho when we got married. Without being too specific, he'd had pretty good reason to take a forceful position in his first marriage. It wasn't a matter of him being the boss because he was male; it was a matter of standing up for what was right. But his ghosts from that time kept coming up when he'd disagree with me. Maybe I did need to talk over my ideas about child rearing or how to communicate with Jon. But I called what he did using a sledge hammer on a thumb tack. His response was so intense that I sometimes felt I'd been confused with his first spouse. Not only his words but the growly, unkind tone of his voice, hurt me deeply. Jon: And Carol was also haunted by her ghosts. Not only her first marriage, but also her family history, had given her a poor sense of self-worth. She tried to fix this by getting me and even others to affirm her. Yet when I would affirm her, it seemed she couldn't receive it; the channel was jammed. She didn't have faith in my love, which of course hurt my feelings and sometimes caused me to withdraw, but usually led me to try forcing truth down her throat. My truth, that is. She would then defend herself with equal intensity, and off we'd go. I think both of us were afraid to be vulnerable, afraid to trust one another. We needed more of God's perspective, and I needed to be kind and gentle rather than forceful and self-righteous. Carol: There are some key Bible verses here for us. 1 Corinthains 13 is, of course, the ultimate description of what our love for one another in marriage and in the church should look like. But when we're talking about intersubmission, the key verses for Jon and I are from Ephesians 5:21-33 Carol and Jon: 21 Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ. Carol:
22 Wives, be subject to your husbands as you are to the Lord. Jon:
25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and
gave himself up for her, Carol:
29 For no one ever hates his own body, but he nourishes and tenderly
cares for it, just as Christ does for the church, Jon:
32 This is a great mystery, and I am applying it to Christ and the
church. Carol: Yes, it is complex. There's the matter of what one should do if one's spouse is abusive, adulterous, or abandoning the relationship. But those difficulties aside, what about the rest of us? Have you ever noticed how much of marriage seems to be about who gets to hold the remote? JON! Jon: Who gets to say when and where you're going to make love? CAROL! Carol: Who gets to pick the restaurant or movie when you go on a date? Well, we balance out on that one. In short, who is in control? If we're not careful, we Christians look just like our secular counterparts. We're fighting for control of the other partner, whether or not the terminology we use sounds like a mutual partnership or the old submissive wife/dominant husband model. Agape love and grasping after control just don't go well together. Jon: Just one year ago, we saw the extreme results of what happens when one set of people thought they could force another set of people to listen. Three thousand plus people died when those planes hit the World Trade Center. Three thousand plus lives, snuffed out because someone thought their point of view would "win" if only enough force were applied. Carol: People become pawns in the service of a cause. People become expendable because one side thinks it has God's stamp of approval and doesn't need to listen, to care, to forgive, or to love. Husbands do beat, even murder, their wives. As someone working with homeless women, I see that sad truth almost every day. Jon: Less extreme, the language of violence can enter into a relationship's daily dialogs, slowly poisoning the marriage. Carol: Early in our marriage, Jon and I both felt we needed to have control. We wanted to make the other do what we thought was the right thing to do. Truthfully, we still feel that urge to force one another to do what we think is right. But God has taught us -- is teaching us -- not to give in to the temptation of lording it over one another. Jon: And Carol and I do have a somewhat unique living environment that helps us break marital logjams. We live in community, that is, at Jesus People USA Covenant Church in inner-city Uptown, Chicago. Jesus People USA -- what we call JPUSA -- is an intentional community of around 450 people that was founded back in 1972. JPUSA identifies with the poor by living relatively simply, and by using our overflow to serve the poor as well as support various ministries. Carol and I have a small one-room apartment, while our kids share dorm rooms down the hall from us. Carol: We share cars from a communal car pool, and share finances from a common purse. We run various businesses to bring money in, and run various outreaches (including a very large and multifaceted shelter program for homeless men, women, and children). Jon: We also live communally because it allows us to create a web of interrelationships which foster accountability, offer role modeling one for another, and create support structures for various ones of us when we are hurting or in need. Carol: When I came to JPUSA in 1987 I was newly-divorced, and I struggled to understand how God, if he was so loving, had allowed me to marry a man who couldn't or wouldn't love me. I had a terrible sense of my own worthlessness, and struggled to accept love from either God or other people. God worked in small ways at first. My two boys were only six, and one of the first things I noticed was how one JPUSA dad would include my boys in on sports, games, and even watching appropriate movies. My boys were able to have male role models near at hand nearly any time of day or night. It blessed me as a mother to see God meeting their need. When I briefly became interested in one man, a JPUSA couple who knew him sat down with me and warned me that he was almost identical personality-wise to my former husband. I listened, thank God, because later events proved them correct. I felt safe and secure in a deep way. I also saw other women in strong, godly roles, ministering to both men and women through word and action. I found a few women who served as mentors for me, people to ask for wisdom and to even imitate. I also felt respected by most JPUSA men as an equal, a sister in Christ. These things didn't stop my struggle within to accept myself, but they did challenge me and comfort me and bring a growing sense of victory. In my marriage to Jon, I discoverd more and more of my gifts, both as a wife and a woman--if anything, he's too attentive! Jon: When my wife left me in 1987, I had no way of dealing with what was happening to me, the overwhelming sense of rejection. Was my marriage over? Was my wife going to leave me and try to take the children from me as well? How long would I have to wait before she finally decided whether or not we would be together? I felt powerless, frightened, alone even in the midst of my JPUSA family. One day at Cornerstone magazine's offices, where I work, the then editor of Cornerstone, Dawn Mortimer, asked me to talk with her. "I've never gotten to see a man go through this -- it usually seems to be women who get left behind. We women usually cry when we're hurting, and talk with each other. But you're sitting there all bottled up, not saying anything to anyone." Her kind tone made sure I didn't think she was reproving me or belittling me. I responded I had no idea what to do with the emotions, and had decided my only road was to put on my game face and "Just do it. It isn't that I don't want to cry; I would like very much to. But I'm frozen inside." She urged me to seek the God who, in her words, "Is your loving Father. He doesn't just love you, He likes you, He wants to be near you." I went off by myself and prayed. Frankly, I was nearly shaking with the anxiety I felt, and when done, felt worse rather than better. Yet because I listened to one godly woman's wisdom, I was freed to become someone who can cry more easily and -- sometimes at least -- empathize with the pain of others. My marriage to Carol in 1989 allowed me to experience being loved in a way I never had dreamt possible. It was as though Jesus Christ used Carol to represent himself in my life. Carol: We've called this seminar "Love, Listening, and Forgiveness: Why Submission is a Two-Way Street." And Jon and I think living in community is one great way to learn that lesson. There is no perfect marriage, because marriages are made up of imperfect couples. There is also no perfect community or church, because communities are made up of imperfect community members. The more you live with a spouse, or the more you live with other Christians in various states of maturity, the more you realize everything has to be about God's grace and not human attempts to control. If you do try to control each other, you turn into one another's enemies. In my opinion, you can use fancy words like mutuality or equality -- but if you aren't practicing listening and forgiveness, you're just a clanging cymbal or banging gong. Jon: When our marriage is at its healthiest is not when I'm issuing edicts and Carol's jumping to obey--or vice versa! It's when we're both looking for a way to love one another more than we love ourselves, in service or in attitude. This is so easy to say, but hard to learn to do. It requires active submission on both our parts, which really is listening, thinking, and praying while the other speaks. In JPUSA, the pastoral staff models this for us. Leadership in our community is made up of a board of eight pastors who live with the rest of us, fail and succeed in their spiritual journeys with the rest of us, and in short do a pretty good job of modeling intersubmission. As far as decision making for the community, they refuse to move on anything unless all eight of them -- two who are women -- come to agreement on what they believe God would have us do. Majority rule seems based on power and persuasion, and maybe a little pragmatism. Complete unanimity, on the other hand, is based on hearing God and not moving until God's voice seems clear to all gifted in leadership. Or between the two of us in our marriage! Carol: That's ideally how marriage ought to be, we believe. Jon collects marriage books, and in one of them the author -- a woman! -- goes on and on about how there has to be a final authority in marriage or there will be no tie-breaker when disagreements occur. She says, of course, that the tie-breaker is the husband. That doesn't make sense at all to us. Jesus said, "Wherever two or more are gathered, there am I in the midst of them." It isn't just the husband and wife there; it's the husband, the wife, and the Holy Spirit. Jon: This is tough, though. It requires more patience -- and more trust -- than many of us have. Again, like our plurality of leadership, the couple has to tune into each other and admit where one's own weaknesses are and where the other person's gifts are. Carol deals with our money -- she likes to do that, and I'm not known for keeping track of anything, much less money. She's a good manager. Spiritually, Carol and I are an interesting blend. She'll often be the one to say, "Let's pray together." I more often want to read a book on marriage aloud with her -- no, not just the sexy ones, either! But she's so creative! She sends cards to everyone on their birthdays, homemade cards at that. She's not maybe as strong on abstract stuff like doctrine or what a movie or piece of art might be trying to say.... Carol: And Jon isn't all that strong on thinking about any two things at once. He'll be watching some PBS program and if I want to talk to him, forget it. He at least has started learning to mute the TV when I talk to him, because it's the only way he can really pay attention. I do think television has an especially peculiar effect on the male sex! But it is important to me, because by doing that he's telling me I'm more important than the television is -- even if it's the nightly news or the Chicago Bears. Jon: That's what two people that are different have to learn. How do I compensate for my strength being her weakness, or my weakness being her strength? Carol: My husband and I are quite different looking outwardly. His style is, well, pretty wild. He likes piercings and tattoos. I'm pretty straight looking. Sometimes, his wildness brings up ghosts for me. This all came to a head -- pun intended -- when he talked about getting his nose pierced and then, only half-jokingly, said he'd like a tattoo on the side of his shaved skull. Well, I got mad. I told him that he couldn't have a tattoo there, in fact no more tattoos anywhere. Then I got really irrational, and started saying stuff like "You should have married someone more like you! I'm too old and too straight for you!" On top of that, I told Jon that since Paul says that the husband's body belongs to the wife, I got to say whether or not he got any more tattoos or piercings and he had to obey what I said. Jon: Her theological rap really irritated me, probably because it was at least partially valid. And like anyone with a certain gift for words, I used my strength to try to argue Carol into submission. Nobody -- I mean nobody -- argues Carol into submission. The one thing we are entirely alike in is our incredible stubbornness. We're the irresistable force vs. the immovable object. At any rate, we ended up royally ticked off at each other over something that was fairly stupid -- even if you do think tattoos are nifty. Carol: But a few days later, when we'd both cooled off, done some reflecting, and had time for Jesus to do His work, we came back together and talked again. This time, Jon told me he'd not really been that serious about the head tattoo. And I told him that I was open to him having his nose pierced if he really wanted it that way, but that we had to compromise on that instead of that head tattoo. He agreed. We compromised... me maybe a little more than him! Jon: We threw that example in because we suspected it would be a first at CBE... or anywhere else. But I think we still are learning how to gracefully agree to disengage on a topic that's too tough to come to agreement on at that moment. It is very hard to realize that indecision may be God's stop light -- wait until the light changes! Carol: For instance, our children have been a particular bone of contention between us. I often would try to get Jon to be more activist in guiding the kids, particularly the girls. His own approach was far more relaxed. They're grown now, but particularly in the teen years, we really had some battles! Jon: In areas like that one, where there never seems to be a final answer or resolution, this is where forgiveness is most required. Carol and I continually banged heads over child-rearing. We simply had two distinct patterns and sets of understandings, along with the fact that each of us had raised one set of kids without the other one being involved. The whole issue of blended families definitely came into play! What we tried to learn, and perhaps learned by enduring more than by coming to a common understanding, was that in the middle of an argument it is important to go back to our common foundation: Jesus Christ. Carol: Forgiveness is the oil that allows intersubmission to work. Two strong people, even mature Christian people, cannot live together and expect no fights. I need forgiveness every day, and so does Jon, whether he'll admit it or not! When you're living in community like we do, you realize that living this closely with other people is quite intense. You encounter their darknesses, their opinions, their personality quirks, and sometimes it is nearly overwhelming. You might want them to ask forgiveness, and they don't even know they've done anything to offend you. You have to decide whether it is a time to confront them, or maybe to confront yourself with the lack of grace toward them you're feeling. Maybe even confront yourself with a shocking idea: I might be wrong! Jon: That's how marriage is, too. If only Carol would always want to make love when I feel like making love, or like the same books and movies I like, or stop falling asleep whenever we watch a movie together! If only Carol would be whatever I want her to be, say whatever I want her to say, do whatever I want her to do! And that's just it, the secret thought that I have in my head that is straight from hell. That's the marriage-killer thought. And it kills Christian community too. "If only I could shape up my church the way it needs to be shaped up!" We set ourselves up as little gods and forget our spirit is NOT the Holy Spirit. Carol: Having a peacemaker's heart is what James calls "wisdom from above." Am I willing to be a peacemaker, gentle, willing to yield to my sometimes very obstinate husband? Not that I'm ever obstinate! It takes humility to love someone so different than I am, and to listen to what they have to say rather than react to it defensively. But it is so worth it when I do accept wisdom from above. Which, by the way, James promises we recieve when we ask if we're not double-minded about it. What's the reward? Jon and I are one another's best friends. We've learned over the years how to hang out together, how to relax into our own things yet still be enjoying each other's company. I've learned to try to listen when Jon's spouting some half-digested quote from Kierkegaard. And I've tried to discover ways I can speak his language of love, because I love him enough to want to speak his language. And I think he loves me enough to want to learn my language. Jon: Carol's name is tattooed over my heart, along with an opening orchid blossom. Her love is more permanent than even that ink, and more a part of me. She is so raveled into my self that I cannot imagine what it would be to lose her. Yet in the past few years, I had to face that possibility. Carol was diagnosed with thyroid cancer in 2000, and only months after removing her thyroid, we were cuddling in bed. Suddenly I stopped cold. "What's this," I asked Carol. I had discovered a small, hard lump, and intuited instantly what it was. The doctors confirmed it. Carol: I had breast cancer. Jon and I experienced a reality check through my operations and chemotherapy that helped both of us love one another more intensely, less focused on stupid small stuff and more focused on what matters. In most marriages, one or the other, husband or wife, is going to leave the spouse behind by dying. This life is so fragile, so momentary, yet so filled with eternal significance. We do not have the luxury of wasting our lives, or our marriages. As our friends gathered close to help us through the surgery, recovery, and chemotherapy sessions, I realized in a deeper way just how much I was loved. Not only by God, whose love even now I sometimes find myself doubting, but also by my community and my husband. Jon: For me, Carol's cancer coincided with my own passage through the mid-forties. I had to face my individual mortality, and the fact that despite what our culture tries to sell us, death is on the way. As Francois Mauriac once wrote, "all is grace." There is a lot of mystery, a lot of sorrow, in this life. There's simply not time for control games; life is a breath, and who can tell if this bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh will be here next to me tomorrow? Carol: We submit one to another not because we both have rights. That's not it at all. God says we're to surrender our rights, within the bible's guidelines. My husband's thoughts aren't always of himself. He's a temple of the Holy Spirit. So am I. We're not listening just to one another, but also to God, Who sometimes speaks through each of us to the other. Jon: And there's something deeper yet. One quote I've seen from Martin Luther says that Marriage is the greatest way God has for teaching us truths about Himself. The second? The church. That is, community. And what we're suggesting is that marriage is the first community, just like Christ's Church is the final community. In marriage, we do learn truths about God. And those truths are also about love. How hard love is, how much endurance it sometimes requires, how -- as Carol and I both discovered in our first marriages -- both partners have to believe in love more than they believe in unbelief. Jesus said we'd be known by our love for one another. Paul wrote we are to submit one to another. These ideas are quite similar... married to each other, you might say. Carol: The greatest of these, faith, hope, and love, is love. We are blessed by our marriage, even when we're mad at each other about Jon's newest tattoo or me falling asleep during Sleepless in Seattle. Again, God's in this. Our marriage is about Jesus even more than about each other. When I look at Jon, I see the Lord's love reflected back to me. Maybe imperfectly, but powerfully and truly. I want to submit to Jon when he's submitted to Jesus. And I trust Jon, because down deep I know he wants to submit to me when I'm submitted to Jesus. That's reality. That's love. And that's marriage. Jon: I'd like to read a poem I wrote Carol years ago, one that CBE's Priscilla Papers reprinted this past year. It expresses my thoughts on this whole issue about as clearly as I'm able to. Solomon's Folly "See, this is what I found, says the Teacher, adding one thing to another to find the sum, which my mind has sought repeatedly, but I have not found. One man among a thousand I have found, but a woman among all these I have not found." They tell me
I must rule you They dare to tell me They tell me
you are inferior We walk before
men who judge I reject these
foolish men I want to lead,
and be led At last I can
love and be loved Oh, lover! Oh, friend! Your light emanates
from the Eternal And your choice Solomon . . . eat your heart out! [The following prayer was written, but not used, due to last minute changes in the schedule. We include it here in case someone would like to use it themselves.] Carol: I'd like to close us in prayer. Lord, you know how often we fail to love one another. Forgive us as we forgive our spouse who sins against us. Lord, you know how easy it is bail out of marriage mentally and spiritually, how fickle our hearts are when it comes to human relationships. Forgive us as we forgive our spouse who sins against us. Lord, you see easily offended we are, how tenderly we treat our own feelings yet how cutting and cruel we can be with our tongues to this other we say we love. Forgive us as we forgive our spouse who sins against us. Lord, you know how easily the heart is drawn away from one's spouse toward another person, another task, another achievement. Forgive such hearts of adultery, Lord, as we forgive our spouse who sins against us. Lord, you see how our lips pay service to the idea that we submit one to another, yet our actions betray us. We say one thing, yet try to control our mate by manipulating, brow-beating, demeaning, ignoring, denying affection. Forgive us, Lord, as we forgive our spouse who sins against us. Thank you, Lord, for your forgiveness. Thank you for the transforming power of the gospel that makes all things -- including marriage itself -- brand new. You are the Lord of love. Thank you, thank you, thank you for this other you have given us. Fill our hearts with love and with a zeal to love in action as well as emotion and word. And fill us with your Holy Spirit so that we never turn our backs on you, on your love, or on the love our mate brings to us. That love, we know, is of you and from you. We recieve it with humility, gratitude, and glad tears. AMEN. -- Do
you want to meet Jesus Christ, or write us about your own experiences
with a mutually submissive marriage?
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