Part of the email:
I sincerely want to do what is best. When I’m given greater light, I want to increase my speed, sensitivity and intensity in reacting appropriately to the greater light, but I’m struggling to practically apply your advice with women.
I appreciate what you said about crowns, thorns, unmerited suffering for the benefit of others, etc. but when it comes to ladies, how do I balance this with having basic standards?
For women, you say they should receive the best man who will have them. For men…find the woman with the greatest growth potential who is also willing to adopt your purpose as her own?
My response:
We teach in terms of the ideal, but we must live in terms of the practical. Even when we make every sacrifice we know of to aim for the ideal, we will feel that we are living very far from it in our experience--even if we are on the exact path to it, and certainly if we have not yet truly found it. The truth is that the ideal is very hard to find, and that is not such a bad thing, given it is also very unlikely we are prepared for or worthy of it yet.
God guides us through successive instantiations of our growing desire towards him. It's the big and glorious bait and switch. Each step of the way, we think about the very best we can imagine and then find what in this world could possibly measure up to that, and we go for it. Time and again, we find the juice wasn't worth the squeeze, and we seek to find something worth squeezing again, ever raising our standards.
So, I'm definitely not saying that we ought to chain ourselves to a lady who is worse to us than a hungry tiger. I am saying...wait a second, you are a math guy. Let's use that. God's greatest joy in your life is going to be determined by an equation that includes as a variable the delta of light in you, the difference from where you started to where you are. Light is a nice and generic term, but inside of it is included at least your ability to see what is most valuable, your willingness to do it, and your ability to enjoy it, etc. These things will certainly include what you are willing to suffer for others, since that is more valuable than anything else. God's kingdom is the real delta force, because it is not only comprised of people with the greatest difference between where they started and where they ended in their character development, but also because the choices they made in life maximally increased the light in everyone they interacted with, compared to how it would have otherwise been.
In my own life, I sometimes feel that I was chained to a tiger in the woman I married. I don't think that is particularly personal or revealing, because I feel that any man who even sometimes really cares about his wife will find that there are times when he runs out of things he can think of to do to help her be more of what he knows she could. I imagine almost all wives could say something similar. My own wife could justifiably say way worse, and I pity her for having to deal with the challenges I provide, even if I think those challenges are much more valuable than anything she could find anywhere else on earth. [Sidenote: The Lord's path is the path to greatest joy, and yet he weeps in overflowing compassion and pity as he hands us the bitter cup required to drink from to follow him. I have seen it.]
Having learned just how much illusion and error there was in what I was enticed into marriage by as a single man, I have to admit that my criteria today would be radically different than it was 15 years ago, and if I could not say that, I would feel like quite a failure for not having learned something more or more correct about what is valuable. I'd rather be married to a woman who treats me like dirt, hates my guts, and looks as ugly as she acts (just to be as extreme as possible here) than any alternative option if, somehow, my determined unconditional love for her over decades of unbroken commitment convinced her that God loves us more than she previously realized. How could I say such a crazy thing, let alone mean it? Because anyone can love a person worth loving. Only God can love one is otherwise unlovable. The closer we get to that standard, the more of his real love we have and demonstrate, and the more strongly we have and demonstrate it. One of the greatest blessings God can give you is a spouse who treats you in the worst possible way, because it is one of the most powerful opportunity to show the true love of Christ, whose love rains on the just and the unjust, and who loved us while we were yet sinners.
Of course, this is an oversimplified hypothetical. In practice, you can't know ahead of time who will respond to God's love through you. You obviously use all your faculties to try to optimize the yield of delta going into your decision. But once you make your decision, it is my opinion that a good standard strategy is to sink your hooks deeply into that woman, and live your life so that when you die you can eternally hold to the following sincere statement: "I did absolutely everything I could for that woman, and if I could have, I would have done even more." It is beyond me to succinctly state just how much such a life will eternally affect even the most reprobate spouse. You have no idea. The same goes for children and parents and siblings and strangers.
You never really know what someone is going to do next, let alone forty years into the future (unless God tells you). All of this is true, even if your spouse remains the most reprobate person in the world. Imagine how much greater joy you would have still if they chose to change as a result of your sacrifice for them. All of this was taught to me by our loving Lord, whose personal life featured so many more examples--even in the limited glimpse we have in the scriptures--than people have noticed, or are yet generally ready to see.
Certainly have standards. Certainly use every ounce of your brain to choose the woman with the greatest potential to grow from and with you from the ladies who are willing to adopt your purpose. And when you find that the one you choose fails miserably to live up to the hopes you had in her, love her anyway. Love her even more than you did before. Love her to the point where you wish you had more than one life to give her and beyond. With every increment of unconditional love you give, God will show you a greater degree of the unconditional love he has for you, and the cycle will continue and grow as long as you are willing to continue it.