"Living Vertical and Bending Out Horizontal"

For a while now David and I have been living in "survival mode" in our marriage which has been good... but not great.  Having a newborn and a two (now three) year old is pretty taxing on a marriage as well as the added responsibilities of work, school, and everyday life overseas.  It is often difficult to get time alone together, and when we do we often lack the energy to come up with something new and fun to do together.  There are not movies to go see or delicious restaurants to try out.  There are no shopping malls to window shop in and no concerts that come to town so it really does take a lot of effort to be intentional in planning activities together.
But David and I both believe that marriage is an amazing sacred covenant created by God, and that a great marriage is a worthy pursuit so recently we started talking about getting serious to make some real improvements in our marriage.  We want to spend more time communicating at the end of each day instead of just "vege-ing" together.  We want to come up with new ideas of things to do together outside of our home.  And we want to read books together. 

The book we are reading now is "This Momentary Marriage" by John Piper.  (Look out! I think I am becoming a Piper-ite!)  In the book Piper talks about an idea that I have never heard or thought on before, and I thought it was really altering in the way I think about marriage.  He talks about "living vertically and bending out horizontally".  What he means is that we are to daily live in God's gospel of grace toward us ("living vertically") while daily extending that grace out to our spouses ("bending out horizontally").  This seems to be a rather simple idea, but living it out is much more difficult.  Piper says this is because many of us do not fully understand all that Christ has done for us by His sacrifice on the cross, the penalty He paid, the wrath He bore.  If we did, it would be our sincere joy to give grace to our spouse even when we are offended. 

So why the focus on constant grace, forgiving and forbearing in marriage rather than on romance, love, and happiness?  Because, "the hard, rugged work of forgiving and forbearing is what makes it possible for affections to flourish when they seem to have died."  This is definitely where we are are a foretaste of where we want to be.