We Are All Broken (5/2011)
Originally posted 5/2011. At that time, I was 33 and was celebrating our 4th wedding anniversary.
I have a memory from my youth. I cannot remember exactly when I had this thought… But I remember the thought clearly. I was probably in high school at the time. I recognized that some people have been though very difficult times in life. Tragedies. Horrible evils inflicted upon them, though they were innocent victims. These tough times leaves them emotionally wounded, broken. I saw them as defective. I guess most people would just say they “have baggage.” This means, they’re a gamble. I remember thinking, “I don’t want to marry someone who is broken.” I feared their “baggage” would impede or interrupt my pursuit of “happiness”… Which was really just my pursuit of self-indulgent pleasure, comfort, and ease. When I was in my teens, it was all about me.
I remembered feeling bad for these broken people. I felt they are still valuable and deserve healthy lives and good things. But I was afraid to enter with them into relationships.
More recently I’ve gained a better perspective. I see more clearly. I too am broken. We are ALL broken. Scarred or trained by our past. How we cope or respond in different situations has been deeply colored by our past. Though many of us can function very well single, our brokenness makes marriage very difficult.
I never knew I was broken. But I am. Some scars are just easier to spot. Since we are shaped by our past, we figure out on a subconscious level how to “do life”… Our coping strategies. It’s our ways of dealing with conflict or pain or fear… It may have worked for us in our system of origin, but that doesn’t mean it was a healthy system. It was an imperfect system, created by an imperfect people, creating imperfect people.
Once we get married, we face a new life system. All the nuances of our spouses heart creates a problem for our old way of doing things. This makes marriage difficult. Maybe even impossible, unless we acknowledge the need for change. There’s a reason 50% of marriages end in divorce. Changing decade old strategies of relating, responding, reacting… coping… If you want a good marriage… there is no easy way to get there. In many cases, divorce is just “the easy way out” because you don’t have to learn new coping and relating strategies. (I realize there are definitely many situations which divorce is not the easy way out, and it may even be a life saving way out. I am not referring to these.)
Another easy way out is disengagement. Lack of intimacy. The once lovers become “roommates” void of intimacy. This is one of the reason’s God loves marriage. His plan for us always includes efforts to make us better, more lovely, more loving, more like Christ. Marriage is God’s plan to expose the rough edges we all have. His plan to get us to push through and work on ourselves. To face our issues from the past… So that HE can heal us. Redeem us. He will refine us like gold in a fire. Theres a lot at stake. He’s entrusted us with much, the precious responsibility of our spouses heart.
God loves marriage.