Read Beyond Ordinary: When a Good Marriage Just Isn't Good Enough for Free Online Page A

took the time to stack our gifts in piles and to make signs labeling your gifts and my gifts. Why would you move them? That isn’t how we do Christmas!”
    “I don’t understand why all the gifts are on the chairs,” Trisha shot back. “The presents stay under the tree until we’re ready to open them!”
    “That’s not how we do it in my family.”
    “What kind of family just stacks the gifts in piles? That’s silly.”
    I then did what no man should ever do. “You’re just angry because your pregnancy hormones are out of whack.”
    Trisha ran to our bedroom and slammed the door, crying. We were only a few months into our marriage, but we had quickly developed the skill to say things we knew would hurt the other person.
    “You are being way too emotional!” Trisha called out to me.“I can’t believe you would get so bent out of shape over Christmas gifts.”
    “You’re acting so immature!” I yelled.
    “I can’t believe you are so insensitive. How could you not even think about my feelings? You are so inconsiderate!”
    “Inconsiderate! How am I inconsiderate? I bought you gifts that we don’t have the money for so you can insult me about how we open them! That’s real inconsiderate!”
    “I hate you!” she screamed, and locked the door.
    Hate me? I thought. She hates me? How does she hate me? Don’t we have to work our way up to hate? We can’t start at hate! It should take years for her to hate me. Where do we go from here?
    The conversation was over. I didn’t know what to do, so I took the opportunity to restack the gifts into piles to prepare for opening. It would be a few hours and many apologies before we were in a place to open gifts, but they would be ready when we were.
    In this ordinary moment, gifts that were bought with love and thoughtfulness were now a visible reminder of the vast differences between us. There was a huge gap between the relationship we’d thought we had just four months earlier and the relationship that rose to the surface in the face of conflict.
    JUSTIN & TRISHA:
    GOD HAS A VISION FOR YOUR MARRIAGE
    When a man and woman first get married, they don’t yet know what they don’t know. In fact, it would seem that most of us who get married think we know it all, right at the beginning. Trisha and I (Justin) certainly held the belief that our marriage would be different. That we would overcome the issues that plagued other couples. That we loved each other more than most couples. After all, we talked about our family differences. We could talk about anything. We knew each other better than anyone else knew us. Our marriage would be different.
    There is no doubt that we all want our marriages to be anything but ordinary. The great news is that God has a vision for our marriages as well. God longs for us to see and experience the vision he had when he created marriage. Look at his vision:
    For Adam no suitable helper was found. So the L ORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and then closed up the place with flesh. Then the L ORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.
    The man said,
          “This is now bone of my bones
               and flesh of my flesh;
          she shall be called ‘woman,’
               for she was taken out of man.”
    That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.
    Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.
    GENESIS 2:20-25, NIV
    God’s idea is completely wild: “They become one flesh.” We don’t usually say “one flesh” in our world today, but God’s vision for our marriage is oneness . What God calls oneness , we call intimacy . Often when we think of the word intimacy we think of it in purely sexual terms. Yet the word intimacy literally means “to be fully known.” Intimacy, as God envisions it, is to be fully known