Real Marriage_ The Truth About Sex, Friendship, and Life Together - Mark Driscoll [15]
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When he suffered from catarrh, kidney stones, constipation, insomnia, dizziness, and a buzzing—“not a buzzing but a roll of thunder”—in his head, she nursed him back to health. When he would fall into his frequent bouts with severe depression, she would hold him, pray for him, comfort him, and read Scripture to him. She drove the wagon, looked after their fields and gardens, purchased and pastured cattle, brewed beer, rented horses, sold linen, helped edit his writings, prepared meals, kept house, raised kids, entertained guests, and was often awake by 4:00 a.m. and working until 9:00 p.m. She was such an incredibly hard worker that Martin had to frequently urge her to relax and even offered to pay her to sit down and read her Bible. She reportedly had a keen theological mind and often sat with Martin and visiting theologians to discuss and debate theology—something unusual for a woman in that day.
The tenderness with which Martin spoke of his wife increased throughout their marriage. He wrote, “I am a happy husband and may God continue to send me happiness, from that most gracious woman, my best of wives.”9 Luther’s earlier teaching on marriage essentially portrayed marriage as a sort of necessary evil to stave off sexual temptation. But, as his loving marital friendship with Katherine grew, his perspective matured as suggested by statements such as, “The greatest gift of grace a man can have is a pious, God-fearing, home-loving wife, whom he can trust with all his goods, body, and life itself, as well as having her as the mother of his children.”10
After preaching what would be his final sermon, Martin died at the age of sixty-two, while away from his beloved Katie. In his will he said, “My Katherine has always been a gentle, pious and faithful wife to me, has loved me dearly.”11
Grace and I ran across the story of the surprising marriage of Katherine and Martin while we were researching this book. It underscored something we’d noticed: marriage is about friendship. All the talk about spending time and doing life together, making memories, being a good listener, growing old and taking care of each other, being honest, having the long view of things, repenting and forgiving can be summed up in one word—friendship.
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In researching this book, we read all or part of 187 books on marriage, most written by and for Christians. Not one of those books had one chapter or major section of a chapter on marital friendship. As we dug deeper, we could find only one significant Christian book written on a theology of friendship, and that was written in the 1100s by a Christian monk commenting on Cicero’s view of friendship.12 In more recent years, only a few popular books have been written on friendship from a Christian perspective, and they do not reference friendship in marriage in any significant way.13 Likewise, the most popular book written about the friendships of Christian women does not speak about a wife’s friendship with her husband.14 And every book for men I (Mark) have read that includes a section on friendship speaks only of friendships between men based upon Jonathan and David’s friendship, while neglecting every marriage in the Bible as a possible example of friendship.
Husbands and wives who want their marriages to be enduring and endearing must be friends. One of the most respected sociologists studying marriage said, “The determining factor in whether wives feel satisfied with the sex, romance, and passion in their marriage is, by 70 percent, the quality of the couple’s friendship. For men, the determining factor is, by 70 percent, the quality of the couple’s friendship. So men and women come from the same planet after all.”15 He continued by saying,
Happy marriages are based on a deep friendship. By this I mean a mutual respect for and enjoyment