How incongruous to talk about marriage on this solemn Day of Ashes. Marriage evokes images of life and joy and growth, perhaps even of youthful, starry-eyed wonder. But this is a day about dying. It’s a day of sober realism and human limitations. It’s a day that begins a season of denial, of fasting, and repentance. How incongruous to bring up marriage on this day.

But then, every marriage has its moments. There’s not one that doesn’t have its darker side, when the "union made in heaven" is all-too-painfully aware of feet mired in clay. You can hardly think of a marriage that hasn’t at some point needed help. The agony of marriage in our time supports one sociologist’s description of marriage as "a state of tragic tension fraught with difficulties."5

It is this perspective that predomina…