Marriage in Real Life

I recently started watching Friday Night Lights, a show about the inner workings of a small Texas town and its obsession with football. The show centers on the high school football coach, Eric Taylor and his wife, Tami, as they—sometimes unknowingly—disciple the inhabitants of this small town in football and in life.

I’m only on the first season, but I’m already struck by Eric and Tami’s marriage. In fact, it might be the healthiest portrayal of marriage I’ve seen on TV . . . ever. In a sitcom world of oblivious, lazy husbands and manipulative wives, it’s refreshing to see a marriage in which husband and wife are equally supportive and kind toward each other.
I also appreciate that this fictional couple isn’t romanticized, but they’re healthy. Eric and Tami grapple through issues together. They unpack these worries at the end of the day, giving each other advice and grace as they go. And even in the thick drama of a television show, their lives aren’t flashy. In fact, sometimes the occasional mundane doldrums of marriage are so realistic that I wonder if I’m watching a real couple.
Sometimes a real, working marriage seems boring to an outsider, or even to us. And so many weeks in my own marriage, I find myself saying, “Wow, this is harder than I expected.” The tedious ins-and-outs and the difficulties of life together can be grating unless we realize this truth: It’s not all about us.
This stark concept, so utterly simple, is one of the hardest for us to grasp as individuals and as a culture. For example, I just finished reading Eat, Pray, Love, in which the author, Elizabeth Gilbert, becomes unhappy in her marriage . . . and leaves her husband. Wait, I must have missed something. When has marriage only been about personal fulfillment?
Marriage is not about the way of happiness, it’s about the Way of the Cross. This really shakes things up for us. Living in the shadow of the Cross, especially in the context of marital love, involves a daily dying to self, a constant sense of living for the other person, even when they’re annoying, thoughtless, or distant.
And this union, which the media fails to capture well, is built on a lifetime of sacrifice for the sake of Christ, for the sake of each other. Sometimes the sacrifice even means loving through the mundane moments, when we’d rather be flitting around Italy, eating copious amounts of pasta, and finding spiritual enlightenment. But marriage certainly isn't joyless, even with its sacrifices. Beauty and laughter also fill the cracks of the day-to-day, where we catch glimpses of heaven.
Real marriage, a far cry from even the best fictional portrayals, is a crucible, a vessel that can stand high stress and ultimately alter its contents, husband and wife. Through its joys and trials we are sanctified in order that we may love more fully.