More Marriage Thoughts

I finished reading The Mystery of Marriage last night (erm... early early this morning) and I really do enjoy it. Here are a couple highlights:

"A marriage is not the joining of two worlds, but an abandoning of two worlds in order that a new one might be formed." p. 103

"In marriage, a wife's imperfections are not something a husband can afford to hold against her, but neither can he afford simply to overlook them. Rather he must bear them with her as part of his cross, just as she bears with him. To live with her in love is to experience at close quarters the way she herself struggles with her own humanness." p. 175

"It is not that we are fooled into thinking that our partner is a perfect person... Rather, it is simply that we become willing to see this person as a perfect wife or husband, even as the perfect wife or husband: that is, the perfect one for us, the very one we need." p. 178

My favorite chapter was on Vows.

My only critique of this book is the chapter on submissiveness. While he does a good job of exhausting the topic of mutual submission out of selflessness, he did not expand on the Biblical submissiveness of wives to husbands as outlined in Eph. 5, except to say that it is secondary to the command to submit to one another. While I get what he's saying (sort of) I'm not sure I'm that far over on the spectrum.

Besides that, awesome book. Five stars.