Sometimes in marriage it can feel like you’ve married a stranger. The person you held and loves feels suddenly distant and impersonal. Who is this person? They are themselves, in all their own nature as broken human beings—as all people are, including ourselves. We, too, become strangers to our spouses and they may feel we are distant and not the person they once knew. We are changing or we are discovering more about ourselves in living with each other. All the demons come out, the shadows, the dark secrets, the fears, and worst of all the actions behind it all. We say words in tones that are hurtful, silences that cause emotional pain, and our hearts grow cold and bitter. We wish for the other reach out and embrace us, but when it doesn’t happen we grow even more afraid, more cold, and more distant. We become strangers who can’t find a relationship because of our assumptions and fantasies unmet. How wretched are we if we expect to get what we want to be happy! Who would be happy then? For who could provide what one expects all the time?
But thanks be to Christ who showed us the way. That happiness is a formula and it is to lay one’s life down for the other. To die to one’s fears, insecurities, expectations, and fantastical desires. We die to be happy as Christ showed us in His death and resurrection. Oh how awful death is! But how marvelous the resurrection is! Both are frightfully so beyond our ability to grasp, yet they are the two things before us that move us one way or another. One toward life is death, the other towards death is life.
Help me Lord to follow You.
It feels easier now because I’ve already been so wretched as to kill and destroy my own loved ones by my actions. But now, Your mercy is giving me at least an opportunity to show my gratitude by loving my husband well when he returns. Make my heart more soft and melted! Give me reason! Give me wisdom! Give me mercy!
Thank You.
Jmegrey
Feelings are real, but they are not reliable.
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