Spiritual Vulnerability in Marriage

One thing this marriage class requires that we do every day is pray with each other. If this feels awkward, they say, just start. If you don’t know where to start, they say, use the ACTS model: during the second class, we filled out a worksheet for each of the steps and then prayed it out loud with each other.

It’s sort of startling to realize we’ve never really had a regular habit of praying together. We talk about emotional vulnerability in marriage, or physical vulnerability, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone talk about spiritual vulnerability. Growing up, our spiritual lives are often very private, and it can be somewhat of a learning process to share that part of your life openly and consistently with another person. I remember how it initially felt more awkward to worship next to Dave than to worship by myself. Ironically, it can be easier to practice regular spiritual vulnerability with a same-gender accountability partner than with your own spouse.

What does spiritual vulnerability mean? I think for me, it means simply sharing my spiritual life with Dave. Sharing about where I feel like I am, about what I’m reading about, what God is showing me, or if I feel I’m in a dry spell, being honest about that. It means building a collective spiritual life, a journey in which we come before and grow in Christ together, in a way that colors but isn’t entirely the same as our individual spiritual journeys. It means learning how to pray together, worship together, and practice spiritual disciplines together.

I’m not sure why intentionally and habitually sharing about our spiritual lives, and building a sense of our spiritual life together, is so difficult in marriage. Maybe it’s the erosion of constant exposure; we’re just around each other so much in so many more demanding contexts that it’s easier not to expend the extra effort. Maybe it reveals a lack of our own spiritual growth; if we don’t think much of God on our own, we’re unlikely to want to share that with each other. Maybe it’s sheer habit.

So at first, it felt awkward, even contrived, to be praying together at the end of the day before going to sleep. But I think it’s becoming a very good thing. A way we can filter through the muck of the day and stay in touch together with what is most important in our lives. A way we can process things out loud before God together. Sometimes I confess I’m so tired I drift in and out of focus, or so distracted my mind wanders, but sometimes I know it’s a powerful time and we are saying what the other person didn’t quite know how to put into words. And I feel like it is something that must please God a lot, that somehow just in overcoming the torpidity and inertia that keeps us from it, we are making a kind of stand, planting an invisible flag in the ground that says, this is who we are. This is who we want to be, a husband and wife who invite God into our relationship and our lives, who lives with our whole family before you.