We are on this journey together with one of the most important topics that often gets ignored: marriage. Most people want to get married, are married, or have been married. As I’ve been sharing on the previous posts on marriage, I believe God, who created us, created marriage. I believe marriage can be the greatest, most satisfying experience of our life. I also believe marriage can be the most devastating, hardest, most miserable experience. By delving into and discovering what God’s truths are about marriage, I believe we can experience satisfaction and fulfillment within our marriage—beyond our wildest dreams.
Let’s revisit when we met our spouse and fell in love. My story: I met my husband through a mutual friend as I was wanting to move from Dallas back to New Mexico. I was in commercial real estate in Dallas, and he was in commercial real estate in New Mexico. Back then, there was no social media or cell phones. My friend gave him my resume, we started talking on the phone, we had a ton in common. He found me a job. I met him when I moved back. Six months later we were engaged and six months after that we were married. We have now been married 32 years.
Through long distance phone calls, I fell in love with his heart first. Then when we met in person; I fell in love with his looks. Love at first sight. They say, you know when you know. Well, I knew! I was so in love with him, I couldn’t sleep. I thought about him day and night. I knew we were going to get married. I felt euphoria like never before. I know, your love story may be completely different from mine. But, as I was sharing my story, were you taking yourself down memory lane? Do you remember those feelings? I want you to stay in this emotion. It’s beautiful right? So incredible! It’s almost magical! I want you to safeguard that feeling.
Contrasts in Marriage
You fell in love, you decided to get married. You had your wedding, committed to spending your life together and sometime in your marriage you started seeing how different you both are from each other. The euphoria turns to reality. The things that you loved and adored in your spouse become the things that irritate you. So much to figure out. Who does what for the house chores. You go to bed early; he stays up late. You know where I’m going with this. It’s the differences. It’s having to make compromises. One person may see the value in going to church or maybe you both do. You realize, though, you have made a commitment to do life with someone you hardly know. You can be married for 5 years, really think you know your spouse, and yet you don’t. You are two separate people, with your own minds, your own thoughts, how you see things.
Getting married is not the finish line. It’s the starting line. We are talking about the realities of marriage. Now, what the secular world view of Marriage tells you, when you get to this place of dissatisfaction with your spouse, trade him in. You can do better. The problems you are having in your marriage are because you married the wrong person. You’ve tried to change him, you couldn’t. Or he’s been trying to change you and he couldn’t. Maybe you’ve had children, and you don’t have the same views on how to parent. Your family did it one way and that’s how it should be done. And we all know the issue of money and the disagreements that come from that. Marriage is a lot. It’s not for the faint of heart. If you’ve been married for 2 years, 10, 20, or 30, you have worked out countless arguments. It’s the reality of marriage. It is two imperfect people trying to figure out how to do life together.
Now let’s talk about the opposite of what I just shared, let’s talk about the honeymoon stage. Wow, what a fun ride that is. You have someone to come home to, with whom you can share your deepest thoughts and dreams. The date nights you’ve gone on. The vacations you’ve taken together. Buying your first house together and decorating it with what little money you have. Maybe having babies. The experience of being a mother and father and the pride and satisfaction of having children together. Making up after some of those fights and being affectionate with each other when you’ve worked it out! Looking at your spouse sometimes and feeling that rush of love come over you. The love and connection that you desire is right in front of you. When you go to bed at night, you have your person.
Marriage Realities
What we did in real general terms there is talk about some of the realities of being. The tough parts and why they are tough, but also the great things about being married. The reality is that you probably married your opposite. You maybe didn’t realize it at the time, but probably some of the things that attracted you to your spouse was he was good at things you weren’t good at, and vice versa. Which can be the very thing that can ignite passion. But then, we spend our marriage trying to make them to be like us. Figuring out your roles and duties in marriage is work.
Marriage is where we spend most of our life. I believe, God is our creator and he made man and woman to have a relationship with him, He also created marriage. He made both without sin in the picture. But Satan wants to destroy God’s plans. Outside of going after each of us individually, I believe his next biggest attack is to destroy marriage. If Satan can get a foothold in your marriage, he can convince you that there are no absolute truths and that the purpose of marriage is about getting our needs met.
We need to take a step back and see the big picture of marriage from God’s perspective. Satan will do everything possible to destroy marriage. This is not just a physical battle to save our marriages, this is a spiritual battle.
So, what is the answer? We are going to go deep here! It starts with you. If your marriage is dead, it’s probably because your soul feels dead. God created us as his masterpiece, then sin entered the picture. Through our life, God is restoring us like it says in Philippians 2:13 “As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins. God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive. It is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose.” Your relationship with God is going to be key to saving your marriage or for creating that strong passionate marriage you’ve always dreamed of having. You may be thinking: “You don’t know my husband.” I don’t and you don’t know mine. But I’m telling you, when God finally opened my eyes and showed me that many of the things I had convinced myself were true, were not true at all!
If you are feeling resistance, I get it! With all my heart, I believe the biggest problem in marriage is Satan’s deceptions. Here is the biggest one: you feel you are not worthy. This is where your motivation & decisions come from. Self-protection, not trusting, getting your validation from people (especially your spouse), manipulating people (maybe your children), believing that your spouse is supposed to give you feelings of significance. Feeling that void of “I am not enough” is Satan’s most powerful lie! Test me on this one, the next argument you have with your spouse. Is your attitude win at all costs, or maybe you go into the victim role. I guarantee you, somehow for you, your worthiness is on the line. That’s why there is strong emotion. This is your worthiness we are talking about.
All Progress Starts by Telling the Truth
Get out that journal. I want you to write out the question: “Do I have an underlying belief that I am not worthy?” Write out your answers. Do you not feel you are worthy of love, of protection? Do you feel way down deep if my spouse, my kids, my friends really knew me they probably wouldn’t love/like me? Write out your answers. If right now you wrote the truth that you have an underlying belief that you are not worthy, congratulations! God is dealing with your heart issue. And we don’t have to get on a Christian therapist’s couch to share all the trauma we experience (you can if you like, you may have some healing and forgiveness to do). But right now, God has your attention. The only answer to counter the lies about your worthiness is in the Bible. And it’s not going to be just reading or hearing the truth. You are going to have to pray, ask the Holy Spirit to help your unbelieving, non-trusting, and hardened heart. This is Satan’s foothold in your life! If you believe this lie, you are not experiencing the freedom of being a Christian, of truly loving your spouse unconditionally. Of creating the beautiful union you dreamed about. Your spouse cannot save you from yourself. The biggest issue we face is our own spiritual battle. God knows your hurts, your sorrows, and your pain. All the self-work we have done to solve this issue, is lies. They work short term. I want you to write all your thoughts about this. Do you believe me? Are you still on the thought train of: “no, it’s not me, the problem is my husband.” This is a harsh truth but sorry if you replace your husband, you still must deal with you. The reason you are feeling so dead inside is because it’s spiritual not physical. The homework I have for you from this installment is to answer this question: “Do I feel unworthy?” If you have felt unworthy, how have you used your marriage to solve this question? How did it bring you heartache? Have you been part of the cause, sucking life out of the person you vowed to love and cherish? When did you give up because he wouldn’t change? When did you start settling? When did you decide we can coexist even if there is no spark in my marriage?
These are tough questions that I’ve had to answer in my own life. I hope as I share what I feel God has put on my heart, you are discovering God’s truth and trust me enough to keep following. In the next installment we will go deeper into understanding how precious you are to God; how worthy we are just as we are. We do not have to earn our worthiness.
Monette hosts a weekly podcast: Mornings with Monette. She has been a life-long learner and and appreciates the opportunity to share what she has learned–both through her podcast and here at The Best-Life Project (based on the content of her weekly podcast). Her messages are raw, honest and straight from the heart. She lives in Albuquerque, NM with her husband Leland. They have three adult children and are enjoying living their best lives filled with travel and adventure.
1 thought on “What’s the Hidden Key to Transforming Your Marriage?”
Comments are closed.