A Shift in Gears

Let's "shift gears" and let you start by watching this cute Disney short that will set the stage for this week's post.

Just like Mickey and his car, we have to work as a team in order to find happiness together. If you can relate all too well with the car, tired and sweltering after the heat of an argument and watching your spouse have their way over and over, you may want to buy them a copy of John M. Gottman's book The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work, and ask them to pay attention to the chapter on Letting Your Partner Influence You. 

As Gottman states, the fact is that if pride is allowed to lift one partner in a marriage above the other, then the marriage is 81% likely to fail. In order for man and wife to feel like equal partners, each has to give and take in turn until it no longer seems a chore, but rather an enjoyable exercise in exchanging respect one with another.

No two people can be exactly similar to one another, and that means that both of you have to adjust to each other. As we all know, the pride that can tear a marriage apart can only be reversed by accepting that our desires do not come first. H. Wallace Goddard states, "The first step is the humility to know that our perceptions are very limited. We rarely know our partner's heart of God's purposes....In the spirit of humility, we listen to our partner and we listen to God."

This change will not occur overnight. It will require the breaking of our own heart, sacrificing our will to God and in turn to our partner. Eventually, the two of you can learn to follow the pattern of God's counsels. Each of you can enlist the wisdom of God, invite the Holy Spirit to guide you, and then express your opinions on any subject. In the end, you will both agree on a course to resolve your conflicts in a way that honors both of you. 

I will leave this post with this analogy: A couple is walking through a forest, an umbrella held in front of them as the wind howls in the opposite direction. They come to a fork in the road and argue over which way they should go. After realizing that this argument is going nowhere, the couple turns to God. They kneel behind the umbrella and pray to the Lord. As they open their eyes, they find that they are no longer on the ground, but the Lord has shifted the wind to carry them both above the forest to their destination. Once again, God has shown that if we trust in Him, he will take us home to Him in ways we never could have imagined.