Resolving Differences Separating Collective Joy

Just how do two people — entwined by God — reconcile the enormous chasm that divides many once-good marriages?

It’s a question many are forced to ask. This article is no one-stop-shop on a road to restoration. It can, however, be a detour to deeper insight, a minnow of a step along the way.

It can only cost a minute or so...

First, let’s understand — there’s no sign of abuse or neglect here. It’s just a deeply worn rut both find themselves in.

Fear is a Vessel Seemingly Taking No Prisoners

When we’re swept out to sea on the rip of fear, the ebbing-flowing tide but a distant memory of genial times, there’s the earnestness of a threat compelling us to take note. We’re not waving, we’re drowning!

It consumes our focus, and fear spawns, as we notice with deathly significance deeds of theirs previously passed over. Benefits of the doubt are now no longer.

Where did our grace go?

Suddenly we’re living in a world of self-condemnation — “How can I think such things?” We’re merely falling into the cesspool of hellish escape — a place we never contemplated might exist for us. But now it’s here, showing in a theatre right in the middle of town!

Calling Fear for What It Is

Fear is a tyrant with few mercies of design. She takes no prisoners and will not be left wanting.

But she just as easily runs away at the right insistence. This is not a controlling aggression, or a vacuous bluff, but a forthright mounting courage to be true in the persistent realm of truth.

This partner of ours is probably desperate in their want of the relationship — just like we may be. With significance of effort there’s evidence of commitment — a love that will just not go away!

Distracting the Focus from Fear Onto Victory; That Which’s Coming

Such forthrightness — and at a means, together — is the will to get through this period, for whatever reason it comes, so the best of times can be enjoyed later.

Times of dissonance, anxiety and fear for what is ‘now lost’ are countered by a change of focus, by one or both partners, and certainly by those afflicted with fear for the relationship’s demise.

The focus sways from stories of tragic break-ups, messy divorces, and children’s lives wrecked because of them, to stories of victory against the odds. These are the victories of grittily hanging in there... through thick and thin, one day at a time until the tunnel’s light beckons resplendently through at the other side.

Both views are equally real; the positive more worthy than the negative.

One is attached to death, the other, life.

The real victory is the commitment of two people to stay when it would be understandable, or at least easier, to leave. It’s the fact that a risky choice is made — against the temporal forlornness of joy — to endure. The gospel secret is lived. Blessed doubly are the couple in Job-chapter-42 fashion, eventually.

We can just imagine the depth of trust, and the wealth of respect, that’s forged from such a collective modus operandi. But not fully until the other side’s reached and well past.

© 2011 S. J. Wickham.