Uniquely Us: Building a Marriage While Under Construction

Combined Thoughts of Stephanie & Dan by Dr. Stephanie C. Holmes

Over the past few months, we have both been writing about construction in different ways. Dan sees the world through systems, engineering, foundations, load paths, and structural integrity. I, Stephanie, see the world through people, identity, attachment, formation, and relationships. The funny thing is that the longer we have been married, the more we realize we are often talking about the same thing using different language. 

One studies buildings.

One studies people.

Both ask the same question:

"What happens when something is built on the wrong foundation?"

As we've reflected on our June podcast series on weaponized Scripture, spiritual abuse, deconstruction, reconstruction, and the work of people like Leslie Vernick, Diane Langberg, Pete Scazzero, and others, we've come to realize something. The greatest challenge in marriage is often not the marriage itself. The challenge is the construction materials that two people bring into it.

When we got married, we thought we knew who we were. Looking back, we knew some things. We also carried a lot of assumptions.

Assumptions about God.

Assumptions about men.

Assumptions about women.

Assumptions about autism.

Assumptions about emotions.

Assumptions about authority.

Assumptions about what a Christian marriage was supposed to look like.

Some of those assumptions were healthy. Some were not.

Some came from Jesus.

Some came from culture.

Some came from church.

Some came from family.

And some came from people who were trying to help but handed us blueprints they had never examined themselves. I, Stephanie, have been talking about my journey with Jesus as the Master Carpenter. For years, I unknowingly handed some of the carpenter's tools of identity formation to teachers, pastors, leaders, books, and church culture. The problem wasn't that all of those people were malicious. The problem was that some of them built things Jesus never intended to be there.

Fear where there should have been freedom.

Performance where there should have been grace.

Compliance where there should have been discernment.

Roles where there should have been identity.

Meanwhile, Dan spent years believing that if you understand the system, solve the problem, and work hard enough, things will eventually work. Engineers love systems. Marriage stubbornly refuses to behave like one. At some point, we both discovered that marriage was carrying loads it was never designed to carry.

Marriage was carrying identity.

Marriage was carrying worth.

Marriage was carrying expectations.

Marriage was carrying wounds.

Marriage was carrying fear.

And eventually cracks started appearing.

Not because marriage was broken.

Because the foundation underneath it needed attention.

The longer we have been married, the more convinced we become that identity sits at the center of far more of life than most of us realize. That may sound like a modern idea, but the pattern begins in the opening pages of Scripture.

Genesis is a book of declarations. God speaks, and reality responds. Light exists because God says it should. Day and night are named before humanity experiences a single sunrise. Land and sea are separated before anyone walks upon them. Again and again, God establishes what something is before anyone can observe what it does.

Then God turns His attention to humanity.

Before Adam works.

Before Eve is formed.

Before there is marriage.

Before there are children.

Before there is obedience or disobedience.

Before there is success or failure.

God declares that human beings are made in His image.

The first thing God gives humanity is not a responsibility. It is not a role. It is not a task. It is not even a relationship. It is an identity. Only after declaring who they are does He begin speaking about what they are to do. That order matters.

In fact, much of the biblical story can be understood as the struggle to remember or recover what God declared from the beginning. The serpent’s first temptation was not merely about eating fruit. It was a challenge to identity. Adam and Eve were already made in God’s image, yet they were invited to question whether God’s declaration was enough. Throughout Scripture, the same pattern repeats. God calls Abram the father of many nations before there is a nation. Gideon is called a mighty warrior while hiding in fear. Israel has been called God’s people long before they consistently act like it. Identity is repeatedly declared before it is fully lived.

Perhaps that is because identity is the foundation from which everything else grows. What we believe about ourselves shapes how we interpret success and failure. It shapes how we experience criticism, conflict, intimacy, authority, responsibility, and grace. Two people can experience the same event and walk away with entirely different conclusions because they began with different beliefs about who they are.

Marriage exposes this reality with unusual clarity. The argument may be about finances, communication, sex, parenting, autism, or household responsibilities. Yet underneath those conversations often lies a deeper question. Am I valued? Am I safe? Am I enough? Am I loved? Do I matter? The presenting problem changes. The identity question remains.

Which may be why so many marriage struggles prove resistant to techniques alone. New skills are helpful. Better communication matters. Understanding neurodiversity matters. Learning conflict resolution matters. But if the foundation underneath those efforts is built on fear, shame, performance, or false identity, the structure eventually begins carrying loads it was never designed to bear.

Engineers learn that the visible crack is rarely the real problem. The crack simply reveals forces that have been acting beneath the surface for a long time. People are often the same way. For both of us, reconstruction began when we started examining some of the assumptions we had carried into marriage.

For me, Stephanie, that meant discovering I did not need to become someone else’s version of a Christian woman or Proverbs 31 woman. The woman who resonated with Deborah’s leadership, Esther’s courage, and Ruth’s faithfulness was not a construction defect. These were part of God’s original design.

For Dan, it meant learning that relationships are not engineering projects. People are not systems to optimize. Connection matters as much as solutions. Presence matters as much as answers. Joy matters as much as competence.

Neither lesson happened quickly. Both are still under construction. And perhaps that is the point.

The longer we have been married, the more convinced we become that the goal of Christian marriage is not finding the perfect spouse. The goal is to become the people God created us to be while helping our spouse do the same. That realization changed how we think about the title of our book, Uniquely Us.

The goal was never for Stephanie to become Dan.

The goal was never for Dan to become Stephanie.

The goal was never to eliminate differences, erase neurotypes, or force either of us into a blueprint that did not fit. The goal was to become more fully who God created each of us to be and then learn how to build a life together from that place.

For neurodiverse couples, that journey is often complicated by more than autism itself. Family systems, church systems, cultural expectations, gender expectations, and years of messages about what a husband, wife, or “good Christian” is supposed to be can all become part of the blueprint. Some of those messages are helpful. Some are not.

The challenge is that many of us never stop long enough to ask where those blueprints came from.

Who handed them to me? And more importantly, did they come from Jesus?

These days, when we sit across from couples, we find ourselves asking fewer questions about roles and more questions about identity.

Who do you believe you are?

Who told you that?

Does that belief draw you closer to Christ or farther away?

Is it part of the original design, or is it an addition someone attached later?

Because sometimes the strongest thing a couple can do is stop building on top of faulty construction.

Sometimes the next step is demolition.

Not of faith.

Not of marriage.

Not of God.

But of the false identities, unhealthy expectations, fear bonds, and faulty blueprints that were never meant to support the weight of a lifetime.

The beautiful thing about Jesus is that He is not intimidated by renovation projects. In fact, He specializes in them. The house is still under construction. So are we.

And honestly, we think that may be exactly where God does some of His best work.

Perhaps the question is not simply whether your marriage is working. Perhaps the deeper question is who you are becoming, and how your marriage is forming you?

Is your marriage helping each of you become more fully the person God created you to be?

Are you building on truth or assumptions? On attachment or performance? On fear or on love?

For years, many neurodiverse couples have been told that success means becoming less autistic, less emotional, less logical, less sensitive, less direct, or simply less themselves. We have become convinced that the goal is something entirely different.

The goal is not to become someone else.

The goal is to become more like Christ.

And Christ never asks us to abandon who He created us to be. He invites us to become the fullest expression of it.

So perhaps that is our invitation to you. Pull out the blueprints. Walk through the house together. Look for the cracks without shame. Notice what has been built from fear, performance, or identities that were never meant to carry the weight of a lifetime. Then invite Jesus back onto the construction site—not merely as an inspector of the finished product, but as the Master Carpenter who designed it from the beginning. Because healthy marriages are not built by people who have it all together.

They are built by people who continually place themselves, their identities, and their relationships back into the hands of the One who knows what the structure was always meant to become.

If you are not reading this on Substack or Patreon and haven’t read the series Dan and Stephanie have individually written, consider becoming a paid Substack or Patreon member. The series this is based on can be found on those sites.

Links found here: https://www.christianneurodiversemarriage.com/

Scroll to the bottom of the page for all social media and ways to support NDCC.