Too often, I'll find myself engaged in an argument with my husband, proving all the reasons why what he does or doesn't do adds strife to my existence. He tells me my faults, I reiterate his, and we both agree that there is something gravely wrong. Neither one of us ever seems to know why it is we can't change. Occasionally, we've written out an attack plan of sorts, a road map for how we hope to get ourselves out of this mess. We may make good on those plans for a day or two at the most. But inevitably, we always end up right back where we started, if not worse. When you make a grand plan and can't execute it, you add an additional failure to your list. You continue to feel defeated, hopeless and lonely. You hit rock bottom, make a new plan and the cycle continues endlessly.
A wise man once that said you need to stop trying to change people. If you point people to Christ, and they begin to love Him, change will naturally occur. Yes, Jeremy and I are Christians. We believe wholeheartedly what the Bible says. But we don't live it. We haven't let those truths soak into our souls. I can't love him the way the Lord has commanded me to, because I'm not focused on Christ. My eyes are only on Jeremy and his faults. For the same reason, he can't love me the way he was created too. We have taken our eyes off of our first Love, and have ceased falling more in love with Christ. So our marriage is then stripped down to two, rebellious sinners, trying to love each other in a way that is impossible apart from the love of the Lord. Without Him, I can't be a wife who looks well after her household, respects her husband and raises her children well. Jeremy can't be sensitive to my dreams, love me with delicacy and sacrifice, if all he can see are my shortcomings.
We can make all the grand plans in the world, read every book on marriage and family, attend conference after retreat after seminar. Yet, if our number one reason for breathing isn't to fall more in love with Jesus, all those efforts are in vain. There's no such thing as peace and happiness apart from Him. We will continually find ourselves at the bottom of a very miserable, lonely well. It is by His grace alone that we remain married. Through His loving kindness, He has planted in both of us a desire to stay. No matter how grim things appear, or how dark the words that leave our lips, we both stay. Neither one of us wants the other to go anywhere. That is NOT a product of human will, but of continual, God ordained intervention. I pray the Lord awaken in me a desire to pursue Him above all other things. His word promises that when this happens, everything else will be added unto me. (Matt. 6:33)
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