Last week, our As He Leads Us discussion on co-sleeping sparked wonderful feedback from so many of you. Truly one of my favorite aspects of this series has been hearing the thoughtful insights and unique perspectives each one of you brings to our discussions.
Towards the end of the comments last week, Stephanie made a great point that inspired me to have a better idea of how to start our series on marriage. In speaking of why some parents and parents-to-be hold a more cautious view of co-sleeping, Stephanie wrote
I wonder if some of the resistance comes from the confusion of cause and effect.
Leaving the kids out of the discussion for a moment, sometimes when a husband and wife aren't sleeping in the same bed it's due to bigger problems in the marriage. If that's the case, then the separate sleeping arrangements are a symptom of the underlying conflict - not the cause of it . . .
This was so profound to me. Yes, some parents avoid co-sleeping because of safety concerns and others because it just doesn't feel like a comfortable way to sleep, but I wonder how many parents stay away from co-sleeping because it seems like a tangible representation of a condition we want to work hard to avoid: Baby quite literally causing separation between a husband and wife.
Before we move any further into discussing the marriage relationship through the lens of servanthood that we advocate, Laura and I want to specifically state that we believe that the husband-wife relationship is the primary relationship in the family.
Within the context of Judeo-Christian culture, the marriage is the only relationship in the family that is not only an agreement between a man and a woman, it is an holy agreement and binding promise to God Himself. As such, it is a relationship that calls for special care and devotion, inviting both partners to participate in the ongoing act of cleaving to each other, nurturing the marriage and ministering to one another before anyone else. In the marriage vows, promises are made to each other and to God be bound one to the other for a lifetime.
The parent-child relationship, on the other hand, is not a covenant relationship. If the marriage is the primary relationship, the parent-child relationship must be, therefore, the secondary relationship. Do we as parents love our children less if we consider the relationship to be secondary? Of course not! This just allows us to see that our relationship with our children is different from our relationship with our spouses (beyond the obvious ways).
To further the examine the difference, let's look at the ideal end result in each relationship. The Bible's picture of parents and children is one in which the parents are nurturing, teaching, training, disciplining, and loving their children to maturity. Children are instructed to honor, obey, and respect their parents. Once the child has grown, he is relinquished from his parents' home and is free to make his own choices (hopefully based on the godly instruction and training he received from his parents), but he is no longer called to obey his parents. Ideally, a shift begins to take place in the relationship between the adult child and his parents: he is always called to honor them, but now that they are no longer his authorities, responsible for his growth and education, the adult child and his parents can become friends. This is a fairly significant change in relationship.
The marriage relationship, on the other hand, has a different end result. The ideal end result for a marriage is that the lover of your youth is the friend and companion of your last days on this earth. To be sure, the marriage will grow, evolve, and change as both individuals grow, evolve, and change through the years, but the binding agreement between husband, wife, and God remains the same. Because the marriage is the relationship that must hold up to a lifetime's worth of wear-and-tear, it is the relationship we must always be tending to.
What Laura and I advocate for parents and parents-to-be is to approach the baby years not as a time to be feared for the potential damage and dissipation it can might cause in a marriage, but rather as a time to look forward to because of the possibility of increased connectedness and powerful partnering. This is only part one in a series on marriage, and I'll be returning next to week to talk further about what all of this looks like in my own marriage.
Today, we would love to hear your feedback on this (slightly controversial) topic. Do you agree with our stance? Why or why not? COMMENTS ARE OPEN! Come share your thoughts.
