The Wounded Covenant

Two wounded people make a vow. That is every marriage, including the good ones.

Each of us arrives at the altar carrying what happened before we met, and most of it is unspoken because most of it is unknown even to ourselves. Then the years do what years do. We wound each other, sometimes carelessly and sometimes on purpose, and the covenant that was meant to be a place of healing becomes the place where the oldest injuries are pressed hardest.

This book is about that, and about the way through it, which is not a technique for communication but a Person standing in the middle of the marriage. It follows the shape of the other two: understanding the wounds we brought, understanding the wounds we made, bringing both to Jesus together, seeking the right help at the right time, and being healed into a fullness the marriage was made for from the beginning. Safety, joy, intimacy, shared dreams, virtue, fruitfulness, legacy. The last part is called Healed into Fullness for a reason.

It also holds one line that will not move. Where there is abuse, safety comes before reconciliation, and no page of this book will be used to send a person back into danger in the name of covenant.

Where it stands

Outlined in five parts and thirty-two chapters. Not yet drafted. This one cannot be written alone, and it will not be. It is the last of the three because it needs the other two under it.

Letters on marriage will come first from twenty years of teaching couples in community, before the book itself exists.