The story goes something like this: A military family has just arrived at their new duty station. They’ve settled into temporary quarters and have begun to look at housing options. The mother takes one of the little children with her to the commissary where the commander’s wife spots her and decides to check on how the family is doing. In the course of the conversation, she asks, “Have you found a home yet?” The child answers, “Oh, we have a home—we just haven’t found a house to put it in!”

In the last pages of "What Did You Expect??" Paul David Tripp summarizes his writing with this: “What has this book been about? It has been a detailed description of the daily work of love that must be done with commitment and joy when a flawed person is married to a flawed person and they are living in a fallen world." Did you catch that—“Daily work ..." So how do you do that under the challenge of deployment?

Perhaps the most glorious paradox that we have witnessed in couples experiencing deployment has been to observe how they have drawn closer together while living far apart.  This can only be accomplished in the love demonstrated in the cross of Jesus Christ—in that sacrificial giving of oneself that puts the other’s interests above our own.

It is not unusual to discover magazines and newspapers with advice for romance and marriage-building in anticipation of Valentine’s Day. Lately I have been pleased to notice how this secular advice has lined up with advice shared in Christian communities. That’s because it works! I recently read a newspaper article espousing marriage-enriching habits of holding hands, having regular date nights, going to bed at the same time . . . and thought, “That’s exactly what Jim and Barbara would advise!” Jim and Barbara Grunseth have been teaching and counseling couples for years. Their advice is sound, biblical, and practical. So I decided to get out my dog-eared and well-worn copy of one of their books, Remember the Rowboats: Anchor your Marriage to Christ, to share some of their timeless advice. You won’t find these points in newsstand copy, but you will find them encouraging and helpful—and true!