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Gary Smalley was one of the country’s best-known authors and speakers on family relationships. In addition to writing The Blessing and The Two Sides of Love with John Trent, their book The Language of Love (newly revised and updated) won the Angel Award as the best contribution to family life. His national infomercial, Hidden Keys to Loving Relationships, has been viewed by television audiences all over the world.

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I Promise

Thomas Nelson

Contents

Acknowledgments........................................................ixPART ONE Security: The Secret to a Great Marriage1. Why Promise?........................................................32. The Power of Honor..................................................253. The Truth about Change..............................................49PART TWO The Five Promises that Create Security4. I Promise to Conform My Beliefs to God's Truths.....................755. I Promise to Be Filled by God.......................................1056. I Promise to Find God's Best in Every Trial.........................1357. I Promise to Listen and Communicate with Love.......................1638. I Promise to Serve You All the Days of My Life......................193Epilogue: the "I Promise" Constitution.................................219Notes..................................................................223

Chapter One

All husbands have experienced it. You are sleeping soundly when your wife shakes you awake and whispers: "Honey, I hear a noise downstairs. I think someone is in the house! Go check."

Begrudgingly you roll out of your warm bed, half asleep and a little irritated at having to check out what is sure to be yet another false alarm. But you dutifully set out to face whatever imagined evil is lurking downstairs. As usual, you find that it's a possum or some similar critter pattering on your porch. You mumble your findings to your wife and crawl back into bed, utterly oblivious to the fact that what has been a minor irritation to you is her greatest fear-the fear that she is not secure. Every husband on the planet has had this experience. I'm convinced that my main value in the marriage is to investigate noises and get rid of spiders.

At 4:20 a.m. on October 6, 2004, Norma's greatest fear materialized. Only this time I was out of town. She was alone.

It all started when the sound of glass breaking jolted her awake. She jumped out of bed and immediately checked to see if the bedroom door was locked. It was. Soon she heard more noises, first like the sound of someone screaming, then moments later something like the sound of an eerie chant. Norma was terrified.

Could it be Michael or Greg, she wondered. Are my sons playing some kind of prank? If they are, I'll hurt them. This isn't funny. "Please, Lord," Norma prayed under her breath, "Let this be a joke." But it certainly didn't have the feel of a joke.

And it wasn't. In the early morning hours a man had broken into our home. As we discovered later, he had overdosed on methamphetamines and was having a drug- induced psychotic episode. (A year later he was sent to a criminal mental institute.)

This man had jumped off his sixteen-foot balcony and shattered his ankle. He limped across the street, dragging his foot behind him, and crashed through our garage window falling hard on the glass and debris and cutting himself severely. But he felt no pain because of the methamphetamines. Bleeding profusely, he broke through the garage door and entered our home. He was convinced that demons were out to kill him as he careened through our house, knocking over furniture and wrecking our decor. From where Norma hid, the noise seemed deafening. She was sure that he would find her; it was simply a matter of time.

As fear tightened its grip on her, she instinctively did the exact thing TV talk show hosts had taught her. She ran into the bathroom and locked herself in the toilet area. The intruder would have to break through three heavy doors to get her. Norma then dialed 911. (I am so thankful that we followed through on installing a phone in our bathroom!) Within three minutes a police officer arrived, but he couldn't enter our home because he wasn't sure how many people were inside. He needed backup. So he waited in our driveway for additional officers to show up.

Meanwhile, Norma endured twenty minutes of this man screaming, chanting, and destroying our stuff-the longest twenty minutes of her life. Several times she heard him screaming so close that she was terrified that he was about to burst through the door into our bedroom. "He's coming in, he's coming in," she cried to the 911 operator. The operator reassured Norma that the police were ready to burst in if he actually entered the bedroom. Ultimately the deranged man barricaded himself against his demons inside the closet of a second floor bedroom-the room right above Norma.

When the police finally apprehended this man, they found blood on the door handle of our bedroom. He had ventured all the way to our bedroom door, but for some reason he had stopped. Norma believes to this day that God's angels stood there with their hands outstretched, telling him that he could go no further.

On that October night, Norma's worst fears were realized. She thought she was secure in our home because we had a state-of-the-art home security system. The only problem was that the system had not been activated that night. We had this first-rate security system, but we paid little attention to using it because we never suspected we would need it. Why would we? Our little town of Branson, Missouri, has little or no crime. It never occurred to us that someone very sick was living right across the street. We thought we were secure, but we were not. Immediately I promised to install additional security measures and vowed that I would never again neglect punching in the security code to our system. That promise was extremely important, but I'll get back to that shortly. First I want to address the importance of security.

Our Need for Security

You may have a similar security failure in your marriage-one that you are blissfully unaware of, or one just waiting to happen. Just so there's no misunderstanding here, I'm not talking about physical security. That's important, and you need to take care of it; but it's another issue entirely. The breach of security in our home that threatened Norma is merely an analogy to the kind of security you need in your marriage. What I'm talking about here is emotional security-the security to truly open up and be known at a deep, intimate level without fear of being blamed, criticized, judged, or condemned. Like most couples, you may think that a successful marriage depends on relationship skills-how many you possess, how well developed they are, and how successful you are in applying them. But none of these skills will have any effect if your marriage lacks that one, basic, foundational ingredient-security.

One of my dreams when I established our ministry's research center was to find out what is really necessary for couples to thrive in their marriages. After directing a research team in years of study, my son, Dr. Greg Smalley, has determined that the number one key to a satisfying, intimate marriage is for couples to maintain security.

Security is the unsung need, the overlooked ingredient that can make your marriage the best on the face of the earth. Security underscores and supports every facet of your relationship. Security makes your marriage feel like the safest place on earth, the place where you want to live and grow and love. But to experience that level of security, you must build a sound relational security system and punch in the code to activate it. When those uneasy...