Dennis Rainey - Starting Your Marriage Right: What You Need to Know in the Early Years to Make It Last a Lifetime

Starting Your
Marriage Right

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
AND DO IN THE EARLY YEARS
TO MAKE IT LAST A LIFETIME

DENNIS AND BARBARA RAINEY

Copyright 2000 by Dennis and Barbara Rainey

All rights reserved. Written permission must be secured from the publisher to use or reproduce any part of this book, except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles.

Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Thomas Nelson, Inc.

Nelson books may be purchased in bulk for educational, business, fundraising, or sales promotional use. For information, please e-mail SpecialMarkets@ThomasNelson.com.

Portions of this book originally appeared in Staying Close by Dennis Rainey.

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE , Copyright The Lockman Foundation 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977. Used by permission.

Scripture quotations noted TLB are from The Living Bible, copyright 1971. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Rainey, Dennis, 1948
Starting your marriage right: what you need to know and do in the early years to make it last a lifetime / Dennis and Barbara Rainey.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0-7852-6803-0 (hardcover)
ISBN 10: 0-7852-8852-X (trade paper)
ISBN 13: 978-0-7852-8852-7 (trade paper)
1. MarriageUnited States. 2. MarriageReligious aspectsChristianity. I. Rainey, Barbara. II. Title.
HQ535 .R33 2000
306.81dc21

00-037981
CIP

Printed in the United States of America
06 07 08 09 10 RRD 5 4 3 2 1

To Ashley and Michael Escue

To our daughter and new son, who are
off to such a great start in marriage.
We pray that Jesus Christ will be the Builder
of your marriage and family.

Other Books by Dennis & Barbara Rainey

Two Hearts Praying As One
Growing a Spiritually Strong Family
The New Building Your Mates Self-Esteem
Moments Together for Couples
Parenting Todays Adolescent
Two Hearts Are Better Than One
Pressure Proof Your Marriage
Rekindling the Romance

CONTENTS

24. Potatoes and PineapplesMaking Individual
Differences a Strength in Marriage

36. The Best Day of the WeekChoosing the Church Where You
Worship God

37. Refresher CourseReviewing the Basics to Keep Your
Marriage on Target

46. Road WarriorKeeping Your Marriage Together When
Travel Has You Apart

W e want to thank Bruce Nygren for his tireless efforts in piecing this book together from broadcasts and writings. Thanks for your faithfulness in the midst of difficult days. We know these days are building your faith, but not without great cost. Thank you for not losing heart in well doing. You are a good friend and comrade in the battle for a family reformation.

We also want to say three cheers for Shelley Smith. We have had the privilege of watching you grow up and grow strong. Thanks to youand Randall as wellfor making the right decisions over the past couple of years. Your contributions to this book are so numerous, there is no way we could list them. You are a talented reader, editor, and writer. Thanks for how youve sharpened and shaped these pages.

Thanks also to Betty Dillon, Dorothy English, Cherry Tolleson, and Randy Likens for help provided along the way. Thanks for tracking down transcripts, juggling schedules, running interference, putting in overtime, and cheerleading. You are a great team, and we really do appreciate you and all you do.

And to Janet Thoma, a hearty thanks for your behind-the-scenes efforts that made this book possible. We value you and the entire team at Thomas Nelson for your many contributions to this work.

M arriage for too many people is similar to an unfortunate incident that happened while we were working on this book. On a Friday evening in July 1999, a young married couple, accompanied by the wifes sister, took off in a single-engine plane from an airport near New York City. The pilot, John F. Kennedy Jr., and his wife, Carolyn, were much in love and possessed all the qualities that so many desirephysical beauty, health, youth, success, fame, wealth, friends. Something went wrong, and after an erratic flight pattern, the plane dived into the Atlantic, killing all three passengers and suddenly ending the hopes and dreams of a beautiful couple.

No one knows exactly what happened on that flight, but the predominant theory is that JFK Jr., although a capable student pilot, was not well enough trained to properly use the sophisticated instruments on the plane. He had to fly by visual cues and quite likely became disoriented in unexpectedly hazy conditions. If he had known how to use the instruments, theres a strong likelihood that he could have piloted the plane safely to the airport at Marthas Vineyard, Massachusetts.

In a similar way, many young couples try to fly through the hazy, often stormy skies of marriage without having the right training and skills. They try to fly the marriage without instrument training. This book has essentially one goal: to show you as best we can how to learn the skills of marriage so that you can avoid taking a plunge that for too many ends in a divorce courta never-ending tragedy that impacts generations.

We dont pretend to know it all. Every day we learn more about marriage. But through years of Scripture study, the insights of many others, and more than twenty-eight years of takeoffs, landings, and no shortage of marital turbulence, we believe we have adequate information to keep your marriage safely airborne.

Starting Your Marriage Right contains fifty-two brief but instructive lessons on how to stay married in todays often-turbulent relational climate. Found in these lessons are the most important principles we could possibly pass on to you. Some couples will want to work through the chapters in chronological order, perhaps reading and discussing one chapter a week. Other couples will want to tackle first the issues that concern them. The book is designed to accommodate either approach. An ambitious couple may read several chapters a week, thereby finishing the book easily within their first year of marriage. Other more laid-back couples, who may have time only for an occasional discussion, may require several years to cover the books content.

The most effective way to really own the material is to recruit and spend time with a mentor couple who have been married five or more years. We recommend that you meet with such a couple on an every-other-week basis during your first two years of marriage. You can cover a chapter or two of your choice during that time. The key objective, though, is to learn from a couple who have already been where you are and where you are headed. This could be your most important investment of time and energy to insure that your marriage will go the distance.

Regardless of how you use this book, we urge you to allow enough time to fully reflect upon and discuss the questions in the HomeBuilders section at the end of most chapters. In particular, do not skip the To Take Action Together segment. The instruction is designed to help you apply the principles discussed in the chapter. The suggestions often include fun activities that will further strengthen your relationship.

One technical pointto make reading the book less cumbersome, unless noted, any use of the personal pronoun I will mean that Dennis is speaking. All of Barbaras comments are clearly headlined or will begin with or include the phrase I (Barbara).