Is respect central to your marriage?

by Christopher Smith

I’ve always believed that the foundation of a relationship between a man and a woman should be respect, plain and simple.  Love is wonderful to have, attraction is always fun, but without that solid foundation of respect, a marriage is on borrowed time, at best.   Unfortunately, love can fade, attraction can fizzle, but respect is tied to personality and as long as the personality doesn’t change, the respect for the person will last a long time.

It’s amazing to me how little I have heard of this throughout my life.  For example, my wife has a pillow that was given to her during her Bachelorette party with the term “Wisdom for the Bride” written across it.  It has very interesting, and very valid pieces of advice, such as “don’t go to bed angry” and “always communicate”.  Yet I did not see anything regarding respecting each other. 

To me, respecting one’s spouse is partially acknowledging the marriage as one unit, but also accepting one’s spouse as an individual with their own desires and goals.  The very same rules you learn growing up about treating others with respect applies here.  While ideally there is a 50/50 dissemination of responsibility when respect is the foundation of a marriage, as situations change in life, this must shift temporarily.  If one spouse is at a time in their life when they’re weak, the other becomes stronger to support them and get them through it.  But it must be temporary and it must not be exclusive to one side only.

It seems in society that the “norm” is for one spouse (quite often, the male) to simply do whatever their counterpart wants automatically.  Many times this is simply to avoid confrontation.  That does not and never will fly with me, as my wife can attest.  If my wife disagrees with something I’m doing, we sit down, discuss it, and come to a compromise.  The same works, vice versa.  If we fight, we fight…but we get it out in the open and we do so respectfully.  I don’t lay down for her and I certainly don’t expect her to lay down for me all the time.  This is a huge part of my personal idea of respect in a marriage.

I was lucky in that the marriages in my family gave me quite a bit of material to NOT emulate.  I came from three previous generations of Smith men who were notorious wife beaters.  My father abused my mother and myself severely for years before she finally had the courage to divorce him.  She eventually re-married, and while the man she married didn’t abuse her physically, I got the sense that he didn’t respect her at times.  He would not allow her to go out with any of her friends or do anything by herself (or would do so begrudgingly).  I think as the years went by, she resented him for it.  I did not want that to be us.  This example was one of many that helped formulate my views on marriage and respect.

But, while I was raised by my mother to respect others, the one event the cemented the idea of respect in a marriage was when my Grandmother passed away.  Two days before she passed, she gave me her final wish.  She asked me to promise her that I would not become like my father (her son).  Her wish was that when I got married, that I would respect my wife and not hurt her. She felt my wife deserved to have a happier life than she and my mother did.   She knew from the time I could walk that it was part of God’s will in my life to break the cycle of abuse.

I took that promise very seriously.  She passed 14 years ago, and I still honor it today just as much as the day it happened.

Without a doubt, respect must be the base of a marriage.  We must not ever forget that, while it unifies us into one whole, marriage does not dissolve us as individuals.  I believe one of the purposes of marriage is not to change a person, but to support, enhance and nurture that individual throughout their journey in life.  A marriage is healthiest when both sides do this for the other.  My grandmother believed this.  As we move forward in our marriage, I like to think she lives on in us, but most of all, I’d like to think that she was proud of us for what we have become.

Is respect central to your marriage? Or is there another foundational element of marriage that is central to you?

PS from The Editor: the last session of Laura Henson's "What's Love Got to Do With It? Building and Sustaining Healthy Marriages" is this Sunday at 11:15amish.

Reflection on Holy Week and Easter

(Ann Carlton wrote a great thank you for our Holy Week and Easter services. You can find it online in the "What's New?" section in the April 22 Good Sam Notes pdf edition (online soonish).)


by Leanne Shawler,
Communications Director


I sing in the choir for my church and so was at every service for Holy Week except the noon Good Friday and the early morning Easter service.

All in all, I have to say this is the most profound and moving Holy Week I've had in a long time. If I had to guess as to why I would say some of that is because of my faith journey over the past year, some of it letting go of needing to stage manage every detail of our services (ok, so folks in the office are laughing as they read this -- but I mean in the moments right before the service. I prepared plenty), and some of it because of the love our community holds for God and each other, and God being present during those services. 

Maundy Thursday: I felt a bit disconnected during the foot washing -- the choir sang and so didn't participate as we've done in past years -- although one of us did go up after we'd done singing. I’m not sure whether or not I missed getting my feet washed or not. It was nice to sit back and not feel like I had to stage manage the whole thing as in previous years too. 


I was deeply moved when we buried the sacraments in the Memorial Garden. It not only felt like we were actually burying Jesus but I suddenly felt as if my sin, my body had been buried with Him. 

Reading of the Passion

The combined Good Friday service with the Newman Center was special even if it started late and went longer than I expected, but I just went with the flow and experienced it as it happened. 


“let us kneel ... let us stand..."

Patty (who works in the Newman office) and I wove the solemn collects/prayers of the faithful together ... I would've made the prayers a lot shorter as it was tough to kneel on tile, which I felt I had to do given that I was right behind the altar. How could one not kneel?  

Saturday's Easter Vigil was the high point for me: we spent a good chunk of it outside, sitting around a sort-of campfire, telling and singing God's story in history, and Revbecca asked us if we would add our story to those we'd already told. God is still working in history.

I decided for energy reasons, and because I was still getting over a nasty cold, to skip the early morning Easter service. They had dolphins show up (it was on a pier). I am bummed about that. Dolphins! Pelicans!

Easter itself was a bit of an anti-climax after Vigil, although Chris gave an awesome sermon about the freedom given to us by the Resurrection and the baptism was just a wonderful moment too. 

 What were your favorite moments of Holy Week or Easter?

Experiencing Jesus' Passion...

by Thom Kassebaum

At the age of eleven, I was diagnosed with a kidney condition which made it necessary for me to take large doses of medications for several years. When I was in high school, one of those medications had to be administered intravenously, usually in the back of the hand.  

Between frequent sessions and the occasional slip of the needle, the backs of both hands became scarred. I attended Happening 16 where I heard "I AM" in a still small voice in my head. 

Six months later, I went to a Discovery Weekend [a family retreat] at Good Sam, where the teenagers had a small group of their own. We listened to a recorded description of Jesus' passion. 

We heard in vivid detail of what a cat-o'-nine-tails was, how many lashes it took for that whip to kill someone, what kind of thorns were smashed on Jesus' head, what the "hand" of the ancient world referred to... on and on. 

I started to daydream, wondering what it felt like for a piece of steel to go through my hand from my palm, using my thumb to mimic the nail. I closed my eyes to fully experience it and my fingers gently brushed the bandage from where the intravenous needle had gone in. I turned my hand over and pressed hard. No, I didn't know what it felt like for the nail to go in from the palm, but I sure knew what it felt like for a small-gauge needle to go from the back forward, what kind of damage was inflicted in the name of "helping".   

"Unless I see the nail marks in his hand, and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand in his side, I will not believe." 

 I put my finger where my nails were, I put my hand in my side; how much more did He die for me! All I remember is seeing His face and mumbling to myself, "My Lord and My God" and, "the doctors were only trying to help."