It's Good to Be Married

Chapter One: The Car Was Running

Marriage is an unavoidable risk.

You can forgo it—plenty do. Maybe you dodge the heartbreak, the late-night arguments, the slow unraveling of two sinners learning to live under the same roof. But dodge that and you also give up the flesh-and-blood joy of a household—the kind of companionship that doesn’t sparkle, but endures. You give up virtuous sex, the kind that’s fruitful and shameless. And you give up the kind of legacy that bears your eyes, your burdens, and, Lord willing, your faith.

Or you can take the risk and get married.

I did. Nineteen and twenty-three. We were young enough to be called fools, and sometimes we were. We broke dishes and we broke trust, and there was a night when we came close to breaking the whole covenant.

I still remember it. Emily had walked out—no, not just out. She was in the car. I didn’t know if the engine was running or if I just imagined it humming like a final note. Either way, the message was loud enough: this might be it.

I stepped out into the night and found her at the wheel. I walked up to the driver’s side window. I didn’t pound. I didn’t yell. I just stood there, knowing if she drove off, that might be the last time I saw her as my wife. Not in a movie-ending way. In a quiet, devastating way—the kind of end you don’t hear until years later when someone says, “Yeah, they didn’t make it.”

We had been fighting for months. Little things turned into big things. Words we’d never said before—divorce—got tossed around like ceramic lamps crashing against a wall. Usually, one of us would start to pick up the shattered pieces with an apology. Not this time. Neither of us flinched. Neither of us backed down. I thought she had gone outside to breathe. To escape. But she had gone out to maybe end it.

And there I now stood, watching her behind the glass, realizing I still loved her. That I didn’t want this to end—not like this. Not at all. I apologized, but her hands tightened around the steering wheel all the more.

I asked God to give me words.

I told her we couldn’t divorce. Not just because of what we had been, but because of what we had vowed. We hadn’t made cheap promises. We’d stood in front of God and man and spoken solemn words. “I do.” “I will.” “For better or worse.” And we meant it.

That hit her. I saw it in her eyes.

She opened the door.

That moment saved our marriage.

But to understand what nearly destroyed it, you have to go back—not just to our vows, but to the air we were breathing when we made them. We were first-generation Christians. No playbook. No legacy of faithful households to imitate. Just a Bible, a busload of idealism, and a lot of evangelical noise telling us what love and marriage were supposed to look like.

Some of it was true. Some of it was poison in a shiny bottle with out-of-context verses on its label.

We met in the late '90s—back when MTV was still shaping culture and JNCO jeans were swallowing teenage legs whole. She wore a wallet chain. I listened to Nirvana. We were both products of broken homes, pop music, and public school. Not exactly a recipe for lasting love.

Emily was raised Roman Catholic in a middle-class neighborhood. I was raised above a bar with shattered beer bottles in my backyard. She went to a private Catholic school. I barely went to school at all. We came to Christ around the same time. I was seventeen and fresh off atheism. She was almost fifteen and trying to find her place in a high school full of rich kids and mean girls. Neither of us had a blueprint for building a Christian household. But we had a Bible, and we eventually had each other.

We met at a Bible study—a little outreach run by a family in her neighborhood. They saw the kids wandering and wanted to do something. So they opened their home and invited a guy to teach the Scriptures. That guy was a friend of mine, and eventually, I showed up too. I was barely saved, but I was on fire—preaching downtown, leading studies, fasting, praying, the whole bit. I wasn’t looking for a girl. I was looking for God.

Emily likes to say she came for two things: the snacks and the hot guys. And, well—the snacks were good. Girls were far from my mind; I was just there to teach.

But God had other plans.

It wasn’t love at first sight. Not for me. I barely remembered meeting her. But I do remember the night it changed. After a Bible study, I asked if I could walk her home. We stopped at the gate behind someone’s yard—an odd little cut-through between houses. I told her I liked her. Then I told her the truth.

If you’re going to be with me, you need to know something. I believe I’m called to ministry. That means we’ll likely be poor. I’ll probably be hated. I’ll be gone a lot. And if that’s not something you’re ready for, we shouldn’t even start.”

It was a terrible sales pitch. But she smiled and said, “I want that.” Then we embraced. It was electric. I was sold—this is the one.

My parents couldn’t afford a home phone, so we wrote letters. Then I figured out that calls from Kentucky to Ohio weren’t long-distance—just thirty-five cents. So I’d drive across the state line, drop the coins, and hope she picked up. Most times, I stood there with trucks roaring past, pressing the receiver hard just to hear her voice. It was loud. It was inconvenient. But love is often inconvenient.

Eventually, I asked her father—Dr. Mayer—for permission to date her. He was a Naval captain, a dentist, a Roman Catholic, and a moral man. I respected him. He laid down the rules, and I followed them. No being in the house alone. Be home at a reasonable time. That sort of thing.

We dated for four years. We crossed some lines we shouldn’t have, but we never had sex. It wasn’t easy—plenty of cold showers and long workouts—but we waited.

And we talked. Mostly about the future. About kids. About getting a bus and filling it with little ones. About raising a family and serving the Lord. That was the vision: biblical roles, faithful children, a household grounded in Christ.

But somewhere between the altar and the running car, we lost the plot.

It didn’t happen all at once. It was slow—like a boat drifting from the shore until you look up and realize you can’t see land anymore. We made three compromises that had huge downstream consequences.

First, Emily got swept u in a careerist mindset. She had always wanted to be a mother and a housewife, but her dad made it clear—he expected her to get a college degree, preferably before marriage. She chose nursing. It was supposed to be a two-year program, but it stretched into three. At first, she just wanted to finish it for him. But by the end, she was mapping out a career—grad school, maybe teaching. And the deeper she went, the more she was surrounded by women who didn’t see motherhood as a calling, but as a liability.

Second, in my zeal for church leadership, I began to bend to a church culture that prized safety and avoided conflict at all costs. The boldness I once had was slowly chipped away by bad counsel. I was told—though rarely outright—to be more agreeable. Softer. The unspoken eleventh commandment: Thou shalt be nice. So I tried. I traded clarity for approval, and it started to bleed into every part of my life. I stopped leading. Everything became about getting permission first. Emily noticed. She lost respect. In a moment of frustration—and uncharacteristic crassness—she said, “It’s like they took your balls from you.”

Third, we delayed having children. We took on student loan debt. We were told to enjoy the early years—travel, relax, get to know each other. So we did. We bought cats instead of cribs. Everyone wants to take care of something, but if it has whiskers, it isn’t your child. A pet isn’t the fruit of love and passion—of two becoming one in marriage. There’s a natural inclination to fill the world with image-bearers of God, and morning walks to the dog park are a sad, unsatisfying replacement.

Little by little, we became two people living parallel lives. We weren’t building a household. We were just roommates with rings. And that's what led us to the night where the car was running.

That’s how close we came to losing it all.

But by God’s grace, that wasn’t the end of the story.

I stood by that car window, silently prayed to God, and said the next thing that entered my mind: “We made vows.”

Not just to each other—but to God. That mattered. Still does. It wasn’t just a commitment born of sentiment or youthful optimism. We’d stood before God and our people and pledged ourselves. “In sickness and in health.” “For better or for worse.” That was always going to be tested. It just got tested earlier than we expected.

Emily looked at me, and something shifted. She didn’t slam the door. She didn’t drive off. She opened it. We walked back inside together.

That night we started talking—not just about our fights, but about our friendship. And we remembered: we liked each other. Really liked each other. We had shared long walks, long drives, long conversations. We laughed easily. We traveled light. The version of us that had been fighting and sulking and sulking some more—that wasn’t who we once were. It had become the norm, but it wasn’t the foundation. It was the dust that had gathered from neglect.

Marriage isn’t just about love. It’s about companionship. And when the romance dries up—and it will for seasons—you’d better have that companionship to fall back on.

God had mercy on marriage that night.

That was the first mercy: we remembered we were friends. True companions.

The second mercy was the vow.

It wasn’t just words. It was the anchor. A vow, properly understood, is a chain that holds you fast when the waves rise. Not a chain that binds like a prison—but one that keeps you from drifting into ruin.

I’d forgotten that. We both had. But saying it aloud, there at the car door, lit something up in both of us. That’s the strange thing about truth—it has a way of snapping you awake when everything else has gone dull.

The third mercy was a harder one.

We realized that part of why we were withering was because we had delayed children. We had told ourselves it was wisdom. We needed time. We needed to pay off debt. We needed to travel, to settle in, to nest. But in truth, we were avoiding the very thing God had built into marriage as its natural fruit.

Emily felt it. Her body knew it before her head caught up. There was a grief in her that didn’t have words. We’d talk about kids, and I’d say, “If you’re ready.” I thought I was being respectful—letting her decide, giving her space. But it wasn’t leadership. It was abdication. I was afraid to take charge.

And she was afraid too. Afraid of being a mother. Afraid she wouldn’t know what to do. Afraid of trading a degree and a job and adult conversations for diapers and spit-up and the quiet isolation that often comes with motherhood.

But buried under that fear was a longing—to hold a baby, to build a home, to raise a family.

I had to stop being passive. I told her, “If you get pregnant, I will take care of you. I’ll provide. You’ll never have to work again unless you want to. I want children. I want them now.”

It wasn’t a demand. It was a confession. I wanted the life we used to dream about. I was done pretending that waiting was what the world calls wisdom.

She threw away the pill. Never again.

A few months later, she was scared she couldn’t get pregnant. The irony of that shift wasn’t lost on us—she’d gone from fearing motherhood to fearing barrenness. That’s when we knew: this was never about practicality. It was about trust. Would we trust God enough to receive children as a gift, not a burden? Would we trust His timing more than our plans?

Then came Hudson.

Our firstborn.

We made a person. Flesh of our flesh. Bone of our bone. He is upstairs right now working on a paper about Thomas More’s Utopia, of all things. He knows the Lord. He’s kind to his siblings. He is in the last days of his childhood and soon will start a family of his own. He’s living proof that beauty can rise from the ashes of near-collapse.

And here’s the thing: if Emily had driven away that night… if we had filed the paperwork and split our lives… eight people wouldn’t exist.

Let that sink in.

Eight souls. Eight eternal images of God. Gone, not through death, but through decision. Through walking away from a fight we were supposed to win together.

But we stayed. We fought. We remembered our vows. And grace broke in before we broke apart.

People love to romanticize hard seasons—“Oh, it was such a sweet time. So full of growth.” Let me tell you the truth: it was bitter. It was humiliating. But it was holy. Because God met us in our sin and failure. And He didn’t just patch things up. He rebuilt it all—better than it was.

Now?

Our marriage—once a desert—became an oasis. We’ve leaned on each other through the death of a child, a brother, and a mother. We escaped the poverty and shame of food stamps and living week to week. We bought a farm, planted a church, and helped build a successful business with close friends.

Now we do puzzles with the girls while listening to the best of Tom Petty. The kids’ laughter spills through the halls—the chaos and the calm. It’s not always easy. We still get tired. We still sin. But the house is full. The beds are full. The table is full. And our life is full.

Ours. It belongs to us. We’re building a household that will impact generations.

This book isn’t just about our story—it’s a warning and a promise.

Marriage is a risk. Don’t let anyone sell you a sanitized version. But no risk, no reward. The sweetest fruit comes from the hardest ground. That’s just how it works.

Marriage Is a Risk

We live in a culture that trains men and women to hedge their bets. Everything has a backup plan. College? Take out loans and call it an investment. Career? Build a résumé, keep your options open. Friendships? Keep it light, keep it digital. Romance? Sleep around, live together, see how it goes. And if marriage comes, treat it like a lease. Sign the paperwork, but keep one eye on the exit.

That's not how God designed marriage. That’s not how anything good works.

Marriage is not safe. Not in the modern sense. It demands your whole self—your body, your time, your money, your name. It binds you to someone else’s failures. It exposes yours. It calls you to build something bigger than either of you could manage alone, and it does it without offering a refund policy if things get hard.

It’s a covenant. And covenants are always risky.

They require vows. And vows require faith—faith in God, and faith that He’ll work even when the other person doesn’t. Sometimes especially then.

I don’t care how carefully you choose your spouse. I don’t care how many hours you log in premarital counseling or how detailed your compatibility tests are. You will suffer. You will sin. You will get sinned against. You’ll find yourself at times married to someone who feels like a stranger.

You can’t Google your way through that.
You can only endure it.

There will be nights you go to bed angry. There will be mornings when you wake up cold, indifferent, tempted to believe that you married the wrong person or that it’d be easier to start over. You’ll find yourself wondering if all the things you hoped for were a fantasy. That’s the risk.

But here’s the promise:

If you stay—if you hold the line, repent, forgive, lead, follow, and learn to laugh again—something stronger will grow. Something holy. Something unshakeable.

You will become one flesh. And not in the wedding-night sense. In the battle-tested, covenant-sealed, buried-in-the-same-graveyard sense. That kind of unity doesn’t come cheap. It’s forged.

Our culture wants reward without risk. They want children without commitment. Sex without covenant. Intimacy without sacrifice. And when it all crumbles, they blame the institution.

But it’s not the institution that failed. It’s the refusal to build it God’s way that brings it down.

When God made Adam, He said it wasn’t good for the man to be alone. So He made a woman. He gave them to each other—not to play house, not to experiment, but to become a household. That’s always been the design.

That design carries risk. But it also carries the reward: children, legacy, laughter, love. Not the romance-novel kind. The kind forged in fire and carried through time.

Emily and I almost lost everything. I’m not exaggerating when I say everything. Eight kids. A house full of life. A church we helped plant. Friendships and feasts and late-night talks on the porch. All of it.

Gone—if we had given up.

But God didn’t let us.

That’s why we’re writing this book. Not because we have the perfect marriage—we don’t. But because we’ve seen what God can do with two people who repent, who forgive, who remember their vows, and who return to the mission they were given in the first place.

The structure of this book is simple. Four sections, roughly in order: companionship, sex, children, and everything else that didn’t fit neatly in a box. We’re not trying to say everything. This isn’t a full-blown theology of marriage. It’s more like a kitchen table conversation—strong coffee, no frills. These are the lessons we learned the hard way, the kind nobody seemed to write down. So we did.

Marriage is an unavoidable risk, and this book is for those who know that safety carries its own kind of danger. If you're after a safe life, look elsewhere. But if you're the kind of risk-taker who knows the best rewards come only by taking the plunge, then we’re here to walk with you.

You can build a household, raise a generation, and die with stories—not just stuff.

It won’t be easy. But it will be good.