Podcast: https://bit.ly/4rf8y6y
Yesterday, I asked you to look at all the ways your spouse blesses you. But I know your spouse isn’t perfect. From time to time they hurt you or let you down. And there may be areas where they fail most of all of the time. And that sucks.
Ignoring the bad won’t make things better. Denying or downplaying the bad won’t help either. You need to be honest with yourself about where your spouse falls short. But being honest goes beyond admitting it’s there.
An important part is understanding where your spouse came from and how they have been hurt. If your spouse had come into marriage with two broken legs, you would not be angry at them for being unable to dance with you. If dancing were important to you, you would be sad about it. But you would not complain or make them feel bad. You would help them as they healed, and only be concerned if they refused to do what healing took.
It’s far more difficult to see our spouse’s emotionally broken places, but those are just as real and limiting as broken legs. And getting angry about things they can’t do, or can’t do well, because of that emotional damage is unfair, unloving, and hurtful.
Beyond accepting that some failings come from brokenness, we need to be able to be honest about any progress our spouse may be making. One challenge here is that they may be growing and doing better in an area that’s not particularly important to us, while making no progress on something we see as critical. Any growth is a good thing. We tend to work on what is easier for us first, moving on to what is more difficult as we get better at healing. And what seems easy to you might not be easy for your spouse.
It’s fair to let your spouse know where you most need them to grow, but make sure you acknowledge the progress they have made before you go there. Having our spouse praise us for any growth is encouraging. Having our growth ignored is discouraging.
It’s important to be able to accurately track growth. We tend to get discouraged when something that was going better falls apart. But growth and healing are rarely linear. Learn to track the high points. Have a few of the last high points been higher than previous high points? If so, there is good, ongoing growth. You can also watch the low points. When you drop to a low point, is it less low than what was common in the past? Again, this is an indication that there is ongoing growth.
~ This is Paul, reminding you that Doing Marriage Well looks different for every couple.
“What’s the password?”
“Woof?”
Image Credit: © Paul H Byerly created with ideogram.ai & Paul Byerly
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