Victor Lee Austin is a priest in the Episcopal Church whose wife died tragically of brain disease. In his book Losing Susan, Austin walks through the story of meeting his wife, their falling in love and getting married, her diagnosis before the age of forty, and her untimely death. Halfway into the memoir, Austin shares with great vulnerability how there came a point during his wife’s illness where he became her full-time caregiver. He had to take his “dearly beloved to the toilet and wash her soiled sheets.” He explains, “On September 29, 1978, I vowed to love Susan as my wife in sickness and in health for as long as we both were alive.” It was in the midst of faithfully loving his wife that Austin discovered something he did not expect.
It is not only that I had to do these things for Susan, things that I did not foresee and for which I was usually quite unprepared. It is, also, not only that in doing these things I found God to be with me and, in the tensest moments, to be present and helping me through. It is this: I found joy in doing these things. Wiping Susan’s bottom, when I had to; washing sheets; guiding her through the obstacles of an airport; taking her to the hospital; sitting by her bedside; shuttling from home to hospital to work and back again . . . I would weep. I would be angry. I would pace the floor. But there was joy in my bones.
The covenant vow that sustains marriage is not a joyless commitment. Although the media may depict marriage as a loss of personal freedom, we mustn’t assume with it that joy comes primarily through self-indulgence. If you view your spouse as an object who exists to bring you joy, you’ll only do them harm and be disappointed. As odd as it may sound, one of the strange but glorious things we discover in marriage is that joy doesn’t come through demanding but denial, self-denial. It’s there that we too can find joy in our bones.
Jesus told his disciples, “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:12–13). In the verses immediately prior, Jesus had said, “If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.”
When we give of ourselves for the good of others, the joy of Jesus rests in us. If this is true of our relationships in general, how much more will it be true within the marriage bond? The key to joy in marriage is the cultivation of a selfless attitude that embraces the reality that Paul reminds us that Jesus taught: “It is more blessed to give than to receive: (Acts 20:35).
A word of caution here, though. This principle is never to be used as a way of manipulating your spouse. The wife or the husband who demands that their partner give on the basis of this truth demonstrates that they do not yet understand it. To truly believe that it is blessed to give is to embrace the life of emptying, but this will never be possible unless we are simultaneously being filled. In order to be joy-filled givers, we must first become humble receivers. Yes, we receive the love and goodness of our spouses, but more importantly, we must be nourished by the gifts of our heavenly Bridegroom. If you don’t first become a humble recipient, receiving the daily bread of God’s grace through prayer and the Scriptures, you’ll soon find yourself depleted and unable to give. So if you’re going to be a giver, you need to first be a taker—a taker of the grace of God in Christ, daily resting in his mercy so you can extend that same selfless love to your spouse.
Footnotes
Victor Lee Austin, Losing Susan: Brain Disease, The Priest’s Wife, and the God Who Gives and Takes Away (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2016), 91.
