MAR 25

I met many spouses who seem to be living out their days waiting for that breakthrough moment when their marriage will finally transform from bad to good, from difficult to easy, from ordinary to extraordinary. Many spouses are desperate for their marriage to improve, so they long for it and pray for it to finally happen. They know, of course, that if there is to be that kind of momentous leap, there must first be a momentous change. 

But here’s something I have long observed: few spouses believe they are the one who needs to change—or at least, the one who needs to change the most. Rather, they are convinced that for their marriage to reach a whole new level, it’s their spouse who will need to undergo the greater transformation. 

In their minds, the breakthrough moment will come when he finally addresses that pesky habit, or when she finally begins that important discipline. The marriage will advance when he at last takes on the responsibility God has given him, or when she finally learns to submit to his leadership. Everything will get better when he finally takes his sin seriously or when she finally gets motivated to pursue holiness. Though both husband and wife may acknowledge they have sins and weaknesses of their own, they are convinced that the greatest holdup belongs to the other person.

Many spouses remain stuck here almost indefinitely, trapped in the conviction that the transformation of their marriage lies just on the far side of the transformation of their spouse. Believing that they themselves have already done what’s necessary to make the marriage thrive, they stand impatiently by, waiting for their husband or wife to catch up. In my experience, they often wait despairingly and sometimes even naggingly. They sometimes wait impassively, refusing to put much more effort into their marriage until they see their spouse begin to reciprocate. “I’m done doing my bit until you start doing yours.”

I wish I could say this dynamic has been entirely absent from my own marriage, but I have to admit that I have fallen into it at times. I have convinced myself that I have reached some pinnacle of marital accomplishment and am now waiting for Aileen to catch up. I have thought very highly of myself and very poorly of her by comparison. It took some time to awaken to the irony that even as I was disparaging my wife, I was also elevating her. Even as I was denigrating her, I was also idolizing her, for she became the key to my joy. I could only be happy and I could only be satisfied when she changed, when she fixed herself. In a strange way, she became a god.

One of the most affecting things I have ever learned about marriage is also one of the most obvious: We marry an entire person. We don’t marry someone who has only strengths or only weaknesses; we don’t marry someone who has only a body or only a soul; we don’t marry someone who has only the history we have made together, but also the history that came before we knew and loved one another. By marrying another person, we have joined ourselves to a being who is wonderfully complex. By focusing narrowly on a particular area of weakness (or perceived weakness, as the case may be) there is a sense in which we lessen the other person’s personhood, reducing them to only one small factor, one tiny part of a much bigger whole. We define them and our relationship to them by this one holdup, this one hangup, this one weakness. It is highly insulting, highly inappropriate, and highly unfair.

Of course, it is not wrong to want our spouse to change. It is not wrong to want them to grow in virtue, to grow in character, to grow in maturity. It is not wrong to want them to be as sanctified as a man or woman can be on this side of glory. But it is profoundly wrong to set aside our own love until they have made the changes we deem necessary or to make our continued effort dependent upon theirs. We are never absolved of the responsibility of loving the one whom God has given us, and to not merely match their efforts, but to “outdo one another in showing honor” (Romans 12:10). If we are to love our enemies and grant grace to those who hate us, how much more our most dearly beloved?

The difficult but freeing fact about your marriage is this: It will never be as fulfilling as you want it to be. It will never provide the degree of satisfaction you want it to. It simply can’t when it is the union of two broken beings, each waging war against the deadly enemies of the world, the devil, and their very own flesh. 

You owe it to your spouse to love them for who they are, not who you wish they would be.

That doesn’t mean you just grit your teeth and endure it, but it does mean that you need to be realistic about who your spouse is and what they are dealing with as they make their way through this world, not to mention who you are and who your spouse is dealing with as you make your way through this world. It means that you ought to rejoice at every evidence of God’s grace in their life rather than resenting every evidence of remaining sin, and that it’s better by far to focus more on victories won than battles still underway. It means you owe it to your spouse to love them for who they are, not who you wish they would be.

We are all prone to thinking that the breakthrough moment for our marriage will come when our spouse finally changes. It is more likely, though, that the breakthrough moment will come when we finally stop idolizing our spouse by making our happiness contingent on their progress. It is more likely that it will come when we stop trying to cajole our spouse and instead determine we will accept them, enjoy them, and do our utmost to bless, affirm, and strengthen them as together we make our way to glory.

Categories: Articole de interes general