Date night, almost twenty years in, and smiling like we just met. It hasn’t always looked like this, and there was a season when we weren’t sure we’d make it. Nights like this one are what we’re fighting for now, because a marriage doesn’t drift apart in a big moment. It drifts one ordinary conversation at a time.
You can tell a lot about a marriage by the last three conversations two people had. If all three were logistics, like who’s picking up which kid, what the account balance is, or whether anyone remembered the thing on Thursday, then you already know what we’re describing.
Nobody is screaming and nobody is packing a suitcase. You’re running a functional household with a competent partner, and somewhere along the way the two of you turned into staff.
That kind of drift is quiet. It happens one tired evening at a time, through the conversation that gets postponed, the prayer you stop praying together, and the week when the kids, the bills and the phones get your best while your spouse gets whatever is left.
We know because we lived it, and for us it went further than drift.
We had already been through lean years, broke enough at one point to be on food stamps. But the season that almost ended our marriage came in 2016, when we discovered toxic black mold in the basement of the house we were renting.
Dr. Z ended up with pneumonia, and Mama Z and three of our children got sick too. For months our bodies were breaking down, and our marriage started breaking down right along with them.
We were exhausted enough to stop being kind and far enough apart that we were each privately building a case. Nobody at church would have guessed, because we were good at the version of ourselves that showed up on Sunday.
God didn’t fix our marriage by making life easier. He started by healing our bodies, and as the physical healed, the relational and the spiritual healed right along with it.
Almost twenty years and seven children later, these are eleven lessons that came out of that season, and most of them cost us something before we learned them.
The thread running through all eleven is this: a strong marriage isn’t built by avoiding hard seasons. It’s built by bringing every part of it, the money, the calendar, the children, the arguments, the bedroom and the future, back under the Lordship of Christ…
Need a quiet moment with God before you dive in? Start with this short prayer…
1. God Doesn’t Just Come First. He Comes First in Everything.
“And He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.” — Colossians 1:17
Most Christians know the list: God, spouse, children, work, everything else. We used that list for years, but it can quietly turn God into the first appointment on the schedule instead of the Lord over the whole schedule.
God isn’t first the way Monday is first. He’s first the way a foundation is first, holding up the money problem, the argument you keep having, what happens in your bedroom, and how you talk to each other at 6 p.m. when everyone is exhausted.
When God was Lord over our church attendance but not the rest of our marriage, the parts we held back stayed broken. Things began to change when we stopped asking Him to bless the marriage we were building and started asking how He wanted it built.
“But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” — Matthew 6:33
2. Prayer and the Word Are the Glue
“Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.” — Psalm 119:105
There’s a point in every hard marriage season when you run out of words. You’ve said the true thing, the kind thing, the angry thing and the thing you regret, and talking more isn’t fixing anything.
That’s where prayer stopped being one more discipline for us and became part of the structure holding the marriage together. Some nights it was the two of us sitting on the edge of the bed, still frustrated with each other, praying badly out loud because we didn’t know what else to do.
That kind of prayer will humble you, because it’s hard to keep rehearsing everything your spouse is doing wrong while asking God to search your own heart.
And a lamp doesn’t light up the next twenty years. It shows you the next step, and some nights the next step was simply to apologize, forgive, stop talking and start listening.
3. Your Health Matters More Than You Think
“Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.” — 1 Corinthians 6:19-20
Some marriage problems are relationship problems. Others get much worse because two exhausted, stressed, physically depleted people are trying to solve them.
We learned this in 2016. When our bodies were sick, the whole house tilted, patience got shorter, and small irritations turned into big ones.
That’s why Bible Health refuses to separate physical health from relational health. Your sleep affects your patience, your stress affects how you talk to each other, and your schedule decides whether you have anything left to give.
Clean living won’t save a marriage on its own. But when your body isn’t fighting you all day, you have more to offer the people God put in your home.
When stress runs the house, the marriage usually feels it first…
4. Children Are a Blessing, Not a Burden
“Behold, children are a heritage from the LORD, the fruit of the womb a reward.” — Psalm 127:3
Our culture tells us to fit children around the life we really want, but Scripture speaks very differently. We have seven children, and they have never been an interruption to what God was doing in our marriage.
More often, they were how He did it. Each one exposed selfishness we didn’t know was there, patience we didn’t know we lacked, and a capacity for love we didn’t know existed until somebody needed us at 3 a.m.
Children put real pressure on a marriage, but pressure doesn’t have to destroy intimacy. There’s a particular kind of closeness in looking across the room at the only other person who knows exactly how chaotic the day was, and laughing together anyway.
Mama Z wrote about what twenty years of trying to be the perfect wife taught her…
“I’m grateful to be here, receiving encouragement, recipes, and whole-body transformation. Even after trying times, I trust you and Mama Z. The spiritual aspect completes the system: body, soul, and spirit.”
— Ellen D.
5. Grace Is Always Enough
“My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness.” — 2 Corinthians 12:9
We don’t tell our marriage story as an accomplishment. Almost twenty years isn’t a trophy that proves we were wiser than couples whose marriages didn’t survive, and we know too many good people who have walked through heartbreaking endings.
What we know is that there were seasons when we had nothing impressive to bring to God. Grace filled the gap between what our marriage needed and what we were able to give, and then it kept meeting us there long enough for us to change.
Grace never pretends destructive behavior is fine, and it doesn’t skip repentance. Grace is what makes repentance possible, and it means your hardest season doesn’t have to be your final chapter.
Grace and forgiveness travel together. Here’s why so many of us get stuck…
6. Your Spouse Is a Covenant Partner, Not a Roommate
“The LORD was witness between you and the wife of your youth… she is your companion and your wife by covenant.” — Malachi 2:14
Every one of your children is being raised to walk out the door someday. When that happens, the person across the table will either be someone you’ve been building a life with, or someone you’ve been quietly ignoring for eighteen years.
Marriage can turn transactional without either spouse choosing it. Groceries, bills, practice times and emails are necessary conversations, but logistics can’t become the whole relationship.
We had to protect things that look unnecessary on a task list, like affection that wasn’t leading anywhere, praying together, and asking “How are you really doing?” and staying in the room for the answer.
“What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” — Mark 10:9
Sometimes separation doesn’t start with divorce papers. It starts with drift, and drift is dangerous because nothing dramatic has to happen.
We wrote this one for the husbands…
7. Submission Is a Posture of Love, Not a Chain of Command
“Submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.” — Ephesians 5:21
Few marriage words carry more baggage than submission. But before Paul says anything to husbands or wives individually, he sets the posture for the whole passage.
Nothing in Ephesians 5 gives either spouse permission to be selfish, domineering or manipulative. The husband is told to love his wife as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her, which is sacrificial love, never selfish authority.
In our marriage, the healthiest question is rarely “Who gets to win?” The better question is “What can I lay down for the person I covenanted to love?”
8. Sex Is a Gift, Not a Weapon
“The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband… Likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does.” — 1 Corinthians 7:3-4
We’re going to be direct here, because being vague about this has hurt a lot of Christian marriages. Notice that Paul speaks in both directions, and that mutuality is the point.
Sex in marriage was never meant to be leverage, punishment or something withheld to control behavior. And the same passage can’t be used the other way either, because pressure, guilt and treating your spouse’s body as something owed on demand break the very mutuality Paul describes.
Real marriages go through real seasons, like pregnancy, postpartum recovery, illness, pain, hormonal changes, grief and plain exhaustion. Those seasons call for compassion, patience, honest conversation and sometimes professional help.
A hard season won’t destroy a marriage by itself. What does the damage is letting silence, resentment or shame become the permanent language of the bedroom.
“Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled.” — Hebrews 13:4
If you’re newly married or about to be, read this one together…
9. Balance Doesn’t Mean Perfect
“Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary.” — Luke 10:41-42
With seven children, work, ministry and a household, plenty of our days end with unfinished lists. For years those unfinished tasks created a low-grade tension between us that had very little to do with the tasks themselves.
Whoever felt more overwhelmed got shorter with the other, and we’d end up arguing over a dishwasher when the dishwasher was never the real issue.
Jesus didn’t tell Martha her work was imaginary. He spoke to what the work was doing inside her, because there will always be another load of laundry, another email and another bill, but this evening with your spouse only happens once.
“Thank you so much for everything you all do, and especially today for the Scriptures. I really needed those today.”
— Mary G.
10. Trials Don’t Break You. They Reveal What You Built On.
“And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock.” — Matthew 7:25
Every marriage gets weather, and ours had a stretch long enough that we seriously wondered whether we’d come out the other side.
Jesus described two houses in the same storm. The storm didn’t create either foundation, because all it did was reveal what each house was standing on.
Hard seasons show you what your marriage is built on, whether that’s chemistry, money, the kids, convenience or Christ. We found out that some things we thought were foundational couldn’t carry the weight we were putting on them, so we rebuilt.
God didn’t remove every storm. He changed what we were standing on when the storm came, and that’s the only reason there’s a twentieth anniversary coming this December.
11. Flexibility Is Faith in Action
“The heart of man plans his way, but the LORD establishes his steps.” — Proverbs 16:9
We’ve made a lot of plans, and God has redirected many of them. That verse used to sound frustrating, but now it sounds like relief, because the outcome never rested on our ability to predict the future.
Jobs change, bodies change, parents age, callings shift, and children change everything. Rigidity can feel like conviction from the inside, and sometimes it is, but sometimes it’s fear wearing a firmer expression.
The test is what happens when the plan breaks. Fear spends all its energy forcing life back onto the map, while faith asks, “Lord, what are You doing here?”
Where This Goes
If nothing changes, drift continues, and it’s possible to spend twenty years as respectful co-managers of a household and wake up beside someone you hardly know.
But another version is possible. It looks like two people who keep telling each other the truth, fight about the real issue instead of the dishwasher, pray together badly, still laugh, and raise children who grow up watching a marriage worth wanting.
We’re not writing this from the finish line, with a house still full of children and plenty left to learn. What we can tell you is that our marriage almost ended, and it didn’t, because of what we finally let God become Lord over.
“A threefold cord is not quickly broken.” — Ecclesiastes 4:12
A Prayer for Your Marriage 🙏
Father, thank You for the covenant of marriage and for the person You have placed beside me. Show me where pride, distraction, exhaustion or simple neglect have created distance between us, and give me courage to own my part first.
Teach us to speak truth with love, forgive freely, serve without keeping score and seek You together. Restore friendship where life has become logistics, and restore prayer where we have relied on ourselves.
When storms come, keep our marriage anchored to Christ, and let our children see a covenant marked by grace, repentance, laughter and enduring love.
Be Lord over every part of our marriage.
Amen.
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#030: The Biblical Marriage Toolkit
This week’s Swap includes the printable Marriage Drift Audit, the Three Questions, the Biblical Conflict Reset, the 7-Day Marriage Reconnection Plan, 12 Biblical Marriage Declarations & help for when only one spouse is on board!
One Swap this week. One faithful step. A transformed life.
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