"How does this one sound, honey? 'For He is our peace, who hath made both one. . . .'"

Tripp, my new husband, reluctantly pulled his eyes from the Sunday paper and regarded me with a thin, patient smile. For days I had been searching through our recently united collection of spiritual books for just the perfect quote to adorn our wedding announcement.

"I thought we had decided on that one from Kahlil Gibran. How did it go? 'The hand of life contains your hearts. . . .'?"

"I don't know; I just never got the right vibration from that one. I particularly didn't like that part, 'Let there be spaces in your togetherness.'"

"Where did you get this peace thing?"

"It's in the Bible."

Even back in 1983 we owned a Bible, though I'm not sure which of us had brought it into the marriage. It was just one of the innumerable books layered on bookshelves throughout our little house. I remember blowing dust off the gilt-edged pages when I took it down that morning.

"The Bible?" Tripp's eyebrows lifted quizzically. I might as well have suggested Aesop's Fables as a resource.

Tripp and I were New Age seekers. Each of us had embarked on a solo search for the truth years before. When we met, we recognized each other immediately as soul mates. From the beginning, we meditated together daily. In emptying our minds to achieve higher spiritual realms, we'd even had visions of our past lives, which reinforced our feeling that we truly belonged together.

Friends and family tried to put the brakes on our relationship, warning us to slow down. After all, I had two daughters from my first marriage, and Tripp, seven years younger than I, had little history of responsibility. How could he take on the burden of a ready-made family?

Nevertheless, after three intense, inseparable months, and against everyone's advice, we eloped. We were married at sunset on the California coast by an innkeeper who dutifully intoned passages containing all the muddled theology we had so far pieced together.

None of it was from the Bible. Unchurched in our younger years, when we began feeling the need for God in our lives, we had turned our gaze Eastward. Books like the Bhagavad-Gita were what collected no dust on our shelves.

So Tripp was probably a little skeptical as he took the Bible and read the passage I pointed to. He paused, reflected, then said quietly, "Well, if it sounds good to you, it sounds good to me."

Those last lines sounded so promising. I loved the way they looked engraved on the creamy, formal announcements, just as I treasured the pictures of various spiritual masters arrayed on our meditation altar.

A picture of Jesus was there too.

Tripp and I thought of Jesus as a great teacher, as worthy of our attention as all the others. Believing that all paths led to the same God, we felt that Christians were misguided and narrow-minded. They did not understand the esoteric, or hidden, message behind the things Jesus said.

Being more advanced spiritually, we understood Jesus to be a more highly evolved being who had tried to show us that we are all divine. We believed that when Jesus said, "I and the Father are one," He was actually trying to show that we are all God. Tripp and I wanted more than anything to achieve our divine potential. We delighted in a vast smorgasbord of New Age ideas and practices, as well as the unlimited freedom to choose those we wished to blend into our own unique belief system.

Things went well. Using positive affirmation, we started with nothing and within four years had built a nationally recognized business and a comfortable home. Materially, there was little that was not within our reach.

Family-wise, too, everything looked good. With the addition of three sons, we now had five healthy children. We enjoyed a reputation in the community as a wholesome, happy, successful family. People looked to us for advice and encouragement in their own lives. And yet there was a flaw in this picture of perfection. My husband and I, each seemingly so in harmony with the universe, could not achieve harmony in our marriage.

We argued about everything.

No amount of money, success or achievement made it easier for us to get along. Tripp and I were both stubborn, strong-willed people. Believing in our own divinity only made matters worse. How could two gods ever live happily under the same roof?

The New Age had taught me nothing about submission or compromise; instead, it had assured me of my right to be happy and to use any means I needed to change unpleasant realities.

I decided I had made a mistake. Tripp was not my soul mate after all. Through years of New Age practices, I was confident that I could create a better reality without him.

Before I could take any action, God intervened.

One morning, after dropping the children at school, I punched the car radio button tuned to "Focus on the Family." Although as a New Ager I scorned almost everything on Christian radio, as a mom I sought any help I could find. That morning in March 1987, Dr. Dobson was interviewing Dennis and Barbara Rainey, founders of Campus Crusade for Christ's FamilyLife ministry. The Raineys talked about a special conference for couples called "A Weekend To Remember," and they radiated confidence, enthusiasm and a message of hope.

"A Weekend to Remember" was coming up in San Francisco the following weekend. I decided this would be my last-ditch effort to save our marriage. We would go, but if nothing improved after the conference, I would ask Tripp to leave.

We argued all the way to the conference, but by some miracle Tripp and I did not turn back.

At the first night's session we learned how God's plan for marriage differed from the world's. The fog of confusion began to lift. Because the family is God's building block, the leaders said, Satan sought to destroy it.

For the first time, I realized that Satan was not a myth. My beliefs had no reasonable explanation for the evil and destruction that was glaringly apparent in the world around me. They also could not explain why two people who loved each other could not coexist peacefully.

Like a tide, the bitterness I felt toward my husband began to recede.

The next day, for the first time, we heard about a God who cared about us and had a plan for our lives. This was radically different from the vague, impersonal religion I had been practicing.

Furthermore, we were told that sin had separated us from God: "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23). I was not divine after all! No wonder my life had never worked.

Even our best efforts, I learned, were inadequate to bridge the gap between man and God. But through Christ I could have a relationship with my Heavenly Father.

I had never heard anything like this before. Jesus was more than a spiritual master! He was God's Son and had paid a terrible price that I might know Him. As the offer was extended, I prayed silently, confessing that I was a sinner and asking Jesus to become my Lord and Savior. Through my tears, I looked beside me and saw my husband crying too. The rest of the weekend was a daze.

We came home as different people. With little previous exposure to Christianity, we were not sure what had happened to us. But something had changed.

The neglected, gilt-edged book was dusty no longer. Tripp and I became avid Bible readers and, from the Gospel of John, realized we had been born again. We burned our meditation altar and threw away our New Age books and tapes, pictures and idols. Gone as well were our beliefs in astrology, reincarnation and pantheism.

All of this was done through the cleansing of the Holy Spirit, as we had no outside influence for the first few weeks. Then we received a follow-up letter from FamilyLife suggesting that we find a church based on God's Word. I remembered such a church from my daughter's high-school friends.

We went the following Sunday. But we entered as babes, not as the highly evolved spiritual beings we had thought ourselves to be.

"What are they into now?" asked our children, our parents and our friends. Yet as they saw our relationship being healed, their hearts softened. One by one, our children put their faith in Jesus. Day by day we learned of God's care for us as He healed our wounds from the past and blessed our family with love and peace.

Nine years have passed. Tripp and I are still the same strong-willed people, but disagreements no longer threaten our commitment or love. We've learned to live in submission to each other and to our Heavenly Father.

"We love because He first loved us" (1 John 4:19). Clearly we see that His plan was always that our home be established on Him.

He is our peace; He made us one.

Barbara Curtis and her husband, Tripp, together with 10 of their children, live in Novato, Calif. Barbara is a home-schooling mom and freelance writer.

For information on an upcoming FamilyLife Marriage Conference in your area, please call 1-800-358-6329. See the FamilyLife Web Site at www.familylife.com.