Oh how tender our hearts are! It
seems like we feel this overwhelming urge to protect those little hearts of
ours. We can’t love more than we feel loved and if we love a bit less, even
better. We want to hurt before we get hurt and if we do get hurt, then our
hearts won’t be healed until we hurt right back. I hope this is something that
others struggle with and not just me!
While we may dream and hope and
desire for that love of romance movies and love songs, the kind of love that no
matter what we do they will forgive us, they will never let us go, or will
never get over us and will always want us back. Are we willing to love that way
in return? Are we willing to completely turn our hearts over to another? I would
bet that not many of us could say that they can. Why? Pride!
Pride is a mean monster! I can’t
think of one argument I’ve had with my husband that didn’t start with pride. In
Drawing Heaven Into Your Marriage, Goddard explains how we use pride to
destroy our marriages. “We define the problem-whatever it is-in terms of our
partner. And we tell the story to ourselves in ways that suggest we were
earnestly and innocently going about life when our partners hurt us. We are
innocent. They are guilty. Our narrow focus keeps us from noticing our own gaps
in knowledge, our personal failings as well as the good qualities and good
intentions of our partners. So we enter battle prepared to whack off the
offending behavior and traits in our partners. But our partners respond to the
attacks with counter-offensives. The story our partners tell is very different
from ours-filled with their innocence and our errors. We respond with
indignation and fury. The battle is on.” I know that I’m not a horrible person
that goes around doing things just to make my husband mad. But do I sometimes
think he did that just because he knows it bothers me? Yep. Even though
realistically I know that my husband is not that kind of person. My pride gets
in the way, my feelings get hurt and my view narrows.
I can see two area’s where I struggle
with pride – I’m sure my husband could think of many more. One – sometimes I
think we feel like once we get married, we are no longer responsible for our
own happiness. Our spouse is now responsible. It’s funny that it doesn’t seem
to go both ways though – I think my spouse is responsible for his own choices
and can control his own moods, yet feel that he is also responsible for my
happiness too. Wow, had I laid that out before we got married, I’m not sure he
would have signed up for that. I think I would have been left waiting at the
alter.
Two – we feel that we can change our
spouse. I really liked this quote from Goddard “The natural man is inclined to
love himself and fix others. God has asked us to do the opposite. We are to fix
ourselves by repenting, and to love others.” Anyone who has been around
toddlers long enough will know that you really can’t force someone else to do
something they don’t want to do. No amount of arguing, crying, yelling, or
pleading will force our spouses to change. Our spouses will change when they
have the desire to change or fix some weakness that they see in themselves.
Why is it that many people who get
divorced and then get remarried end up divorced again? I don’t know for sure,
but maybe it’s because we didn’t change. Maybe it’s because we are still doing
the same things, but expecting different results with a different person. Would
we have stronger marriages if we cared less about marrying the perfect person
and cared more about becoming the perfect person? I think so! But to do that,
we have to let go of pride.
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