Marriage Walls

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A beautiful pre-Civil War cemetery sits along the back edge of our yard. The oldest grave is dated 1856. Family members of a past generation honored their loved ones by erecting an iron fence along the front and tall stone walls on the other three sides. Family members of a current generation honor them by keeping it beautiful year-round.

God’s handiwork is here. He has covered the ground with a blanket of grass. Giant cedars tower above this level acre. Moss clings to the stone walls. When I open the large iron gates and walk inside, I am in a quiet, peaceful place.

I like the children’s picture book, Matthew Wheelock’s Wall by Frances Ward Weller. As a farmer clears rocks out of a field so that he can plant and sow, he piles the rocks in a jumble. Later he decides to use the stones to build a wall to last a hundred years. At the end of the book, his great-great-granddaughter plays on top of the wall, while the little girl remembers Great-Great-Grandpa Matthew Wheelock.

Every wise husband and wife is a wall builder. They build walls around their marriages in the hope that someday their own great-great-grandchildren will play on that wall.

A marriage is a safe place for two people–and only two. Satan works hard to sneak other people into that safe and sacred place. It starts out in an innocent way. A young wife begins to confide in her minister. A husband starts to encourage a co-worker whose husband is in Afghanistan. A woman who is passionate about missions begins to work on a missions committee with a former missionary whose wife is ill.

Slowly Satan lures people into relationships that invade a marriage’s safe place. The wife begins to believe that the minister understands her better than her husband does. The husband notices that when he is at home his wife is always busy with their children but that the wife of the soldier has time really to hear his heart. The former missionary talks to the woman who is passionate about missions about the difficulties of caring for his wife and confides that she never really met his needs.

As these relationships deepen, Satan whispers: “You aren’t doing anything wrong. You have just found someone who understands. You haven’t committed adultery.”

Beware of affairs of the heart. Sometimes they lead to affairs of another kind, and, even if they don’t, they have entered that safe place where no one is welcome but one husband and one wife ’til death do them part.

The homeschool method you have chosen, the curriculum you use, the co-op you’ve joined are not as important as the wall you are building. Children grow best with parents whose wall is strong. Build it well.

By wisdom a house is built,
And by understanding it is established;
And by knowledge the rooms are filled
With all precious and pleasant riches.
Proverbs 24:3-4, NASB

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