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The war started long before Mary Beth and I met.

I grew up in a home buzzing with open, honest, spill-your-guts conversations. When there was an argument, we talked—even yelled—till we reached a resolution.

In Mary Beth's family, arguments were rarely resolved. Instead, they swept conflicts under the rug, woke up the next day, and pretended nothing ever happened.

So it's no surprise that when we got married, we had decidedly different ideas about how to approach a spat.

I remember one heated discussion early in our marriage. I don't remember what we were arguing about, but I told Mary Beth, "Scripture says we can't let the sun go down on our anger." I took that verse literally. I was determined to resolve it before the sun went down.

	It was a moment of truth. I did something that freaked out everybody, including myself. I screamed at the top of my lungs, Satan will not have this family!

Mary Beth apparently felt differently. She just sat there on the bed looking at me while I kept yapping away. I said, "We can't let the sun go down on our anger!" And she said, "Yes we can. Just watch."

Then she fell asleep, just when I was making my final point. I was enraged.

I'm ashamed to say this, but our first apartment ended up with a perfectly round, fist-sized hole in the drywall of our bedroom. Later, Mary Beth told me she was praying I'd hit a stud.

It wasn't the last time Mary Beth fell asleep during one of my soliloquies. It drives me crazy. But I can drive her crazy too. It's all part of the war.

Identifying the enemy
Don't get me wrong. We don't fight all the time. We have plenty of fun, and the big picture of our marriage is a happy one. But it's not without its battles.

We were really young—I was 21, she was 19—and immature when we got married. We certainly weren't ready for the challenges we'd face, especially early in our marriage.

	Were both seeing the person God intended each of us to be, slowly coming to the surface.

We had only been married six months when Mary Beth got pregnant. That certainly wasn't in our five-year plan.

Then we had another surprise, just five weeks after Emily—the oldest of our five kids—was born. Our apartment burned down, and we lost everything. Money was tight, insurance was nil, and tensions were high.

Mary Beth, who was still a "daddy's girl" at that time, called her father in tears, begging for help. Her mom and dad came as quickly as they could.

But I told my parents not to come. I said, "We've got all the help we need, and you'd just be in the way."

My mom was in town a couple days later visiting my brother, and she dropped by just to check on us. Mary Beth's parents were still there, and stress levels were soaring.

Mary Beth was still sorting out the raw emotions of being a brand-new mom. We were both grieving the loss of our apartment and our stuff. Mary Beth's parents were doing everything they could to help us, and they couldn't understand why my parents hadn't been there all along to help too.

Then all those emotions blew up into a huge argument. I'm not sure what all was said. But the picture I remember was my wife standing on one side of the room with her parents, and they said, "Well, we may just take our daughter back to Ohio." My mom was on the other side, crying and saying, "Then we'll just take our son back to Kentucky."

For me, it was a moment of truth. I could see that an enemy was trying to destroy our marriage. My in-laws weren't the enemy, and my parents weren't the enemy. Then I did something that freaked out everybody, including myself. I screamed at the top of my lungs, "Satan will not have this family!"

Everybody just got real quiet and stared at me like I was a weirdo. But it was something I had to do.

Mary Beth and I have talked about that day many times. She agrees that Satan was trying to wreck our marriage.

That intense scene helped us define our role as a couple, as an entity separate from our families. Mary Beth was still a daddy's girl, and I was wondering when I'd get to take over the role of being the man in her life.

I got my answer that day. After all those emotions were exposed, I sat down with Mary Beth, my in-laws, and my mom. I also called my dad so he could be part of the conversation. I said, "Dad, something important happened today, and you need to understand I'm really leaving you and Mom and I'm cleaving to my wife. Mary Beth has to know where my loyalties lie, and I hope she does the same thing."

She did. And still does.

That battle won, we then turned to finding a new home and building our lives together. But the war wasn't over.

Preemptive strikes
I've come to realize that marriage isn't the neat and tidy, happily-ever-after business of fairy tales. Unfortunately, the storybooks never tell us how Cinderella and Prince Charming dealt with in-laws, diaper duty, challenges with careers and callings, and their past wounds.

The greatest joys in our marriage have not come without a fight. In fact, there's not much in our marriage that hasn't come without a fight.

And yet I'm the first to say I'm happily married. Mary Beth and I still feel giddy about each other, and our love grows daily. But we fight. And yes, sometimes our marriage is war.

But we shouldn't be surprised. From the first pages of Scripture, we find that God put us in relationship—first with himself, and then between man and woman. Then the great enemy of relationships moves in, and the war begins. What Mary Beth and I now understand is that there really is an enemy who is out to destroy marriages and families, and he'll stop at nothing.

But we recognize that enemy. And we will not let him win.

When we got married, Mary Beth and I made an agreement: Divorce is not an option. And we're sticking to that agreement, no matter what.

Sometimes it's hard, especially for Mary Beth. She's often home, holding down the fort with five kids, while I'm out on the road doing concerts.

So, even though we say divorce isn't an option, we know it's not outside the realm of possibility.

I found that out the hard way. My parents had the greatest marriage in the world. It was definitely one of those till-death-do-us-part relationships. They always said divorce wasn't an option.

But after 28 years, Mom and Dad divorced. I couldn't believe it.

Mary Beth and I hadn't been married long when my parents split up. And right away, we decided to take whatever precautions we could to keep the same thing from happening to us. We surrounded ourselves with good friends to hold us accountable, people who aren't afraid to ask us the tough questions about how things are going. And we realized we needed counseling. We've continued to get counseling all along. We laughingly say now that we probably know most of the good Christian counselors in Nashville, and we've worn them all out.

But that's a good thing. Counseling keeps our marriage strong. We don't do it because our marriage is in trouble. Mary Beth calls it our "preventive maintenance plan." And after 19 years together, it's still working.

The good fight
There's one other thing we've noticed about the ongoing "war" of marriage: It's God's way of revealing character.

When we got married, I was clueless. But I soon found out that the only person I was really good at loving was myself. All of a sudden I had all these opportunities to actually live out the truths of Scripture—dying to self, taking up the cross, living for another person. But it's so much harder than either Mary Beth or I ever imagined.

But that's what makes it so rewarding. We're both seeing the person God intended each of us to be, slowly coming to the surface. No one else in the world could have ever found all those buttons to push in me, revealing what God really sees when he looks at my heart. But I also realize there's no other person who could bring to the surface what I've become as a husband and father and a servant of Christ. And prayerfully, I'm bringing those things to the surface in her too.

We certainly have our differences, but we love each other dearly, and God teaches us through our struggles. To reach over and hold Mary Beth's hand as we drive along, without saying a word, knowing the flames and the floods we've walked through together, is incredible.

Mary Beth says our marriage is a journey of "struggling redemptively" as our relationship grows. I agree. Yes, marriage is sometimes war. But we wouldn't trade ours for anything.

Adapted from Marriage Partnership (Fall 2003). Used by permission. Steven Curtis Chapman, an award-winning Christian singer/songwriter, lives in Franklin, Tennessee, with Mary Beth and their five children. Learn more about his ministry at www.stevencurtischapman.com.

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