Manning Up to Marriage Separation

“I promise I’m not trying to make your life harder,

Or return to where we were...”

― Dido, White Flag (2003)

There was a time, nearly 10 years ago now, when my world was thrust into darkness, and I had to reach out to the light. Though I was a tacit believer, I now found myself so vulnerable I simply had to commit to God; for my survival.

I quickly found, in the land of marital separation beyond one’s will, that, in chasing my beloved, I skirted narrowly between the two poles of making life harder for her by chasing too hard and conveying disinterest by not chasing hard enough. And by chasing, I mean in a dignified way where a man’s integrity remains as the cornerstone unto blessing for her. There is no sense of chasing by aggression, here. No ‘man’ chases aggressively.

I have seen this in other men’s lives also.

Caught betwixt and between the call of God on their lives to chase a love that was real but for her has passed, what is the man to do? How are they to honour God and honour her at the same time? And how are they to regale back and forth on the feedback of their peers? These, of course, are unanswerable questions.

But blessed is the man who is prepared to ‘man up’ to the challenges that have beset him. Only he can tell if he has something truly to offer her, and he better hope he is hearing right from God, but in my experience he most often is. How noble it is for a man to spend himself on changing and improving so he may be an acceptable husband; not for his own good, only for hers.

In dealing with the unanswerable questions, the man is guided by wisdom, for wisdom makes us her own when we step by faith into unanswerable space.

There is nothing wrong with staying awhile in the confounding reality. This is how we are grown. This is how God takes us and expands our lives within the concepts of acceptance, grace, maturity, humility, patience, and fortitude.

From weakness the man is granted strength because he goes about the work that God has made opportune for him. If he can spend his life for her, no matter the outcome, she will be blessed, and the kids also.

When a man faces the torture of marital separation beyond his will, all he can do is choose to bless her life in every way that God nurtures his mind to do. All the while he does this he should bear in mind the beauty that God is forming within his character. God wastes not one single hurt, and, in blessing her, he himself will be blessed.

© 2013 S. J. Wickham.