Confessions of a Happily Married Man

INTRODUCTION

The Story We Absolutely Had to Tell

ON VALENTINE’S DAY LAST YEAR, I HAD A CONVERSATION THAT led to one of the most consequential decisions of my marriage: My wife and I decided to tell our story in this book.

To be clear, I initially had no interest whatsoever in writing a book. My heart was broken over my dad dying. I was still suffering from the psychological aftershocks of doing an extreme treatment for a chronic illness. I also had a demanding job as a civil defense attorney that was pulling me away from being the husband and father my family needed. I felt drained.

But on February 14, dear friends came to visit unexpectedly, and after a family Valentine’s dinner of roasted chicken and fries, my friend Josh looked at me and said, “Have you ever thought about taking your articles and making a book out of them?”

I guffawed, but Josh was so enthusiastic about it that by the time the conversation was over, I believed that some of my stories about marriage could bless readers—maybe people needed to hear real stories from a happily married man. Maybe a few of the hard lessons I had learned could help others.

Three days later, a network news website published one of my pieces about maintaining a forgiving heart toward your spouse. I got an email from a reader named Vincent who complimented my writing and added, “I think you should write a book with all of your articles. It will certainly help a lot of couples.”

I began thinking, Wow. Two times in three days. What if God really does want me to take my articles and make a book out of them?

An hour after Vincent’s message, I called one of the editors at the network and asked if he could make a small correction to my article. He made the change, complimented my writing, and said, “Have you ever thought about taking your articles and making a book out of them?”

That was three people in three days who were saying the same thing: Take your articles and make a book out of them. I had no doubt at that point: God was up to something.

I emailed a friend and told him that I believed God wanted me to write a book about marriage, but I needed to get an agent. Thirty minutes later, I received an email from a reputable book agent named Robert Wolgemuth. He had read my piece, looked through some of my other articles, and liked what he’d seen. “Would you be open to a conversation about working with an agency like ours to write a book?” his message read. “This would be our honor.”

I read the email in a stupor. Then I looked up from my phone at my wife and said, “Raquel, this is crazy. I’m going to write a book about marriage.”

When Robert and I talked on the phone a couple of hours later, we marveled at the way the Lord had brought everything together. I described my book idea to him and, although he liked it, he had one concern. “Are you sure your wife will be OK with this?”

Raquel and I prayed about whether to move forward, and after taking it to God, we came to the conclusion that He was calling us to it.

“Are you sure you’re willing to put all of this out there?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said. “So many married people out there are hurting, and they feel alone. If our stories can help them notice how God is at work, even in the messy stuff, it’s worth it.”

Raquel and I began brainstorming about the book and came to the big question of how the book would begin. It would have to be with a story. We looked at each other and knew, without a doubt, which one: the baby monitor story.

Baby Monitor Nightmare

Three months after our first daughter was born, Raquel and I went on a trip to visit Raquel’s grandmother in Puerto Rico. It was a nice trip overall—unless you count ten infamous minutes that occurred at her grandmother’s apartment. What happened in that little span of time is by far the most awful, humiliating moment of our marriage.

We weren’t our best selves with each other, and by that I mean we were frequently “acting ugly” as they say in Mississippi, where I grew up. A lot of it had to do with the fact that Raquel’s hormones were “out of control” (her words, not mine) and she was exhausted from trying to keep our new baby girl on a rigid sleeping and eating schedule.

We managed to hold things together when we were around her family, but when we were in the car alone, we would bicker about—well, pretty much everything. The worst was when we were driving around the island in the compact Toyota Corolla we had rented. Raquel sat in the passenger seat and kept telling me how fast to drive, which lane to be in, and whether to turn left or right. I would raise my voice and tell her to get off my back, and then I would remember our baby sleeping in the car seat and hope we weren’t somehow scarring her subconscious with all our bickering. But it wasn’t the driving drama that sent us over the edge—it was a baby dedication, of all things.

We thought it would be nice to honor Raquel’s grandmother by dedicating our daughter at church on the following Sunday. Things got messy on Thursday, though, when Raquel’s aunt asked us to sing a couple of duets in Spanish at the service. Raquel and I speak Spanish and sing, but we had no idea what songs to sing or where in the world to find accompaniment music. I quietly (and with a touch of irritation) shared these concerns with Raquel one afternoon in her grandmother’s apartment, and she swiftly accused me of having a bad attitude. Before long, we were having a whispery argument that kept getting louder, so we decided to go to the guest room to hash it out.

Once we closed the door, our tempers flared. At first, we argued about the baby dedication performance; then we launched into more general accusations of each other’s faults. Adjectives like hypercritical, hypersensitive, lazy, controlling, and stubborn flew back and forth, until suddenly, in the middle of a sentence, Raquel froze and stared at the baby monitor, which was right next to us. We simultaneously had the same thought, but I was the first to speak.

“Oh my goodness,” I said. “The baby monitor is right next to you—it’s on!” This was significant because the speaker for the baby monitor was sitting in the living room, and Raquel’s grandmother and aunt were home.

“Don’t worry,” I said, breathing a sigh of relief. “I just realized I turned it off right before we came in here.”

We continued rehashing our grievances until we got tired of arguing, and Raquel left the room. That’s when she walked into the living room and saw that the monitor speaker was, in fact, still on. She looked at it, hoping she was mistaken, but then she heard me rustling about in the room. She looked around and noticed her aunt walking down the hall toward her bedroom and heard her grandmother clinking pots in the kitchen.

Raquel’s heart sank as she turned off the monitor and returned to the guest room. “I just went to the living room, Joshua. You didn’t turn the baby monitor to the ‘off’ position. You turned it to voice activation.”

We started arguing over whose fault it was that the baby monitor had been left on. It didn’t matter by that point, though. We had just given her family a peek at what we were really like behind closed doors, and we couldn’t take it back. We were exposed, ashamed, and more aware of our weaknesses as a couple than ever.

The Other End of the Baby Monitor

Welcome to the other end of the baby monitor, where you’re about to listen in on the life of a happily married man who’s learned almost every lesson about marriage the hard way.

I want to assure you that my wife and I have many cringe-worthy episodes in our marriage that would be far more embarrassing if they were broadcast on a baby monitor. We also have moments that would make the eavesdropper laugh and cry and want to apologize to his or her spouse for being unloving. My favorite moments, however, are the ones in which I can step back and say, “You were in that, God? Really?”

Your marriage has those moments every day, though you might not recognize them. From the day you and your spouse said hello for the first time to the absurd argument you had last week, He’s in it all. And with just a little bit of attentiveness, you’ll notice Him at work, using ordinary life as His tool to craft you and your marriage into everything He planned it to be.

My prayer as you read this book is that you’ll notice God in the frustration of pointless arguments, the tender moments of spiritual and physical intimacy, the negotiations over who’s in charge, the conflicts over the in-laws, and the dark nights of your souls when all you have is each other. More than anything, I want this book to encourage you to sit with Jesus on the other end of your baby monitor, to invite Him to listen in and point out the moments that you don’t even realize are significant. Those moments are happening all the time, whispering His name more often than you may have ever noticed.

You’re the Expert

One time I appeared on a morning show in Australia via satellite to talk about the value of giving your spouse a performance review (there’s more about that later on in the book). I came home and watched the interview with Raquel online and caught something I had missed during the taping: They had introduced me as “relationship expert Joshua Rogers.”

When Raquel and I heard that, we burst out laughing. Regardless of what an Australian morning show host may call me, I can assure you that I’m not a relationship expert. I’m not even an expert at my own marriage. I’m just an observer, a happily married man who has discovered a great deal about my marriage (and myself) by paying attention to what God is doing in my day-to-day married life. If that makes me a “relationship expert,” then I’m an expert, and I’m hoping this book will make you one too.

So, let’s go. Let’s turn on the baby monitor and see what we discover. If my experience is any indicator, you’ll be as pleasantly surprised as I have been to find God in the messiness of marriage.