Just How Married Do You Want to Be?: Practicing Oneness in Marriage

My wife and I have a traditional arrangement: she's a full time stay home mom, I work 50+ hours per week in a very male field (cop), 3 kids with one home schooled, whole family is very into our evangelical Quaker faith. HOWEVER, we are not traditional "people" : we have never fit well into the traditional gender role idealogy, because we are VERY egalatarian in everything we do (one of the #1 reasons we love the evangelical Quaker church). So when we hunted for marriage books over the last 15 years of our marriage, we were always frustrated and disappointed with male domintated materials. This marriage book is the first book we have read that we can feel comfortable with most of the ideas presented. It is a breath of fresh air for us, and all the concepts are rooted in scripture. This book will (help us) improve our marriage like nothing we've read before. If your marriage is not the common heirarchial type and you have been frustrated with marriage books for a loooooong time, this is THE ONLY book for you. I mean c'mon- the author stories alone are worth it! She is a female bible scholar (very rare), and her pastor husband was a stripper BC?! You can't beat THAT marriage match for variety and challenge to the your readers. As a former beer truck driver/bounty hunter/and cop for over a decade, I need stuff that REALLY cuts to the heart of things. Of course, this book will be a difficult read for those who MUST HAVE the old tradtional Christian marriage model.

My husband and I are especially drawn to the biblical model of marriage as our desire is to live out our marriage in such a way that those needing Jesus will be drawn to Him. The title carries a double meaning: Just how married do you want to be to your spouse? And just how married do you want to be to Christ? This was an amazing look at marriage, presented clearly as a covenant created by God to enable us to work out our growth as Christians, as well as truly becoming One with our spouse for a victorious marriage. The insights of being open and searching our souls for hidden attitudes and defenses explains how the work of growing closer in our marriage can draw us closer to God. The honest examples of struggle in understanding our spouse is encouraging to us at every stage of marriage, whether newlywed or veteran. We have been encouraged to open ourselves to greater intimacy and understanding of each other, as we realize there is always more ways we can draw closer to becoming One. Being in community with other believers was shown to be an essential part of the growth process. The scripture references were very helpful and certainly shed light on the topics as being a covenant from God.

We have been married for 43 years and found this book a real help for this season of our life together. Over the years we have heard many "theories" of what submission and headship means in a marriage, it was refreshing to read the Biblical truth in such simple and clear terms. Thank you, Jim and Sarah for being so open about your realtionship and thank you for the help you gave us. Your book has made a difference in our relationship. Susan and John Kimes

I've read Sarah's other two books, and at this point, I think you could call me an outright Sumner fan (it's great to hear from her husband this time too). Let's see... I purchased my second copy halfway through the book and my third copy the day after I finished. Since I come from the vantage of having absorbed Sarah's heftier volume on "Men and Women in the Church," I'll be interested to see how well others without that background or inclination follow the simpler delineation of theology in this volume. Here Sarah reframes the egalitarian side as the "diplomatic" model, the complementarian side as the "business" model, and her own, boldly, as the "biblical" model. I think this is wise and will prove helpful for mass distribution. A lot of people I know would be scared by the unfamiliar words and would assume they won't be able to "get it." So her vocabulary choice effectively removes an obstacle for many. Also, by calling her own model the "biblical" one (I happen to agree), she avoids the potentially overwhelming feeling of "pick and choose" that would greet those couples unfamiliar with theology (the anxiety factor). They are still free to pick and choose, of course, to discount her ideas and turn to others, but she simply presents her case as what the biblical answer is. For that, I give this presentation a hearty "brava" for its creative simplicity. On the practical side, I'm thankful for Jim and Sarah's abandoned honesty. I've read a number of marriage helps from both sides of the camp and can say I saw myself in eye-opening ways in these pages more than any other. Their discussions of marital expectations, hot button issues, and so forth really hit the mark. The suggestion to choose a spouse who cannot stand the ways in which you are prone to sinning rather than one who is apt to be complicit in them is interesting. I've never particularly been one to make spousal "lists," but that sounds like a pretty meaty consideration to include. Nuggets such as the comparison between our shared identity in marriage and our shared identity in Christ abound. This shared identity in marriage is not presented, thankfully, as one swallowing the other up as is so often more or less the case in marriage helps from the complementarian end where the woman is pretty much conceived to serve the man's identity. On the other hand, it celebrates and offers true meaning to the oneness equation in a way that egalitarian helps may not. One way I like to think about true oneness, though not a Sumner metaphor, is as a drop of water which has been multiplied in size by the introduction of more water. As it "becomes" one, it often looks like two drops of water which have been fused. Thereafter, by the laws of physics, it struggles more than a smaller drop would to hold together, wobbling in its surface area as it makes a humble descent, sometimes starting to individuate again into the separate-but-fused look, and sometimes bursting. This represen

This book is incredibly honest and you can tell that Sarah and Jim aren't trying to write a book to look awesome to the world. It is deeply theological. Most marriage books are informed through psychology (which is great), however I find it incredibly refreshing to look at marriage theologically and meditate on the implications of oneness and being members of the body of Christ. Also, Headship as a biblical metaphor is unpacked very clearly and concisely. It deepened my understanding even after reading Sarah Sumner's Men and Women in the Church. Great book and worth the read.