Aint Nobody Perfect- No Perfect Person, Parent, No Perfect Couple

We are all the same

No couple that I know is struggle-less. The best I know tend to have their lions share of unrelenting struggle.

Rhonda and I have wrestled with both the relational and spiritual side of our marriage through the years. It’s always intrigued me that in our 25 years of marriage we have wrestled with some of the same problems people have been struggling with for thousands of years.   I have found that many problems in my marriage and the ones I have helped are perpetual problems. These are those that seem to reoccur and are never completely tied up in a bow and put away once and for all.  Problems like discipline issues with the kids, finances, sexual frequency issues, communication conflicts, stress management etc. They seem to always pop up.  If this is on the money, it seems to me that the key for couples is to not waste relational energy on trying to solve their problems once and far all. Rather, we must learn to manage the problem as they arise the best we can.

Another thing that has stood out in my marriage is that Rhonda and I never seem to be at the same page spiritually. Though we’ve been in ministry basically since day one, we have never been like the super model, super spiritual couples you see at church. Once when Rhonda and I revisited a church we used to attend for years, many of the same couples we have known for years seemed to take on a different look from what we remembered. I commented that it looked like somebody sprayed them with “holy.” They looked as if they were the happiest, most successfully spiritual couples in the world. But we knew better. After looking from the outside we could see pretense even more than when we there. The outside was white; the inside was dark (Matthew 23).

I have discovered working with church people through the years that those who seem almost unreal in their faith, usually are. Most couples I know, including my wife and I really struggle to keep our faith above water. “Basic plaid” couples like us who are trying to keep careers, kids, marriage, in-laws, finances and everything else juggling in the air, all at the same time, often fight with their faith. Instead of Ward and June, we are Edith and Archie when it comes to faith.

As I reflect on my marriage, it has been extremely rare that we have ever been at the same place spiritually. Occasionally we are, but that’s the exception. When Rhonda is titanium strong in her faith, my faith might be flimsy as paper. When she’s in the Bible, and praying for every unnamed soul in Bangladesh or some other remote place in the world, I am in the alley struggling just to take another spiritual breathe.  At times I struggle with little things like saying grace at the dinner table. In fact, I ask Rhonda to say grace during this time.  I just don’t want to. I am the poster boy for the mind set Paul describes in Romans 7 & 8- the guy that cant bring up the words, so he just moans and grunts. Sometimes I just can’t put into words what I feel. I don’t even know how I feel. The things that I don’t want to do are the very things that I wind up doing. These are the times I don’t want to read the word or hear it preached. Billy Joel sounds as good Billy Graham to me.

Its true that often when Rhonda is praying for her enemies, I am keeping score of everything mine have done to hurt me. I rehearse over and over again what I will say when confronted. When I am the one Mt. Sinai spiritually- saving marriages, desperate souls, pontificating about the deep mysterious of life, she’s down at the bottom of the mountain hoping I will just shut up about all my spiritual-ness.

Can you guys relate to what I am saying? We really are just regular folk who have a great deal in common aren’t we? Most of us seem to be on different ends of the beach at the same time when it comes to spirituality.

Well, let me get back to what I was saying in the other blog (Writing - like marriage and parenting) marriage,parenting and writing are a lot a like. While writing, I sometimes feel exhilarated, motivated and on top of the world. I have something to say and I need to let it out. Letting my heart pour out the ends of my fingertips to your heart energizes me. I visualize you the reader sitting in a soft back chair by a little lamp reading my words and exclaiming, “oh my goodness, this is it! I get it.” I visualize you putting what you learn into practice. Maybe you fail at first, but then you keep trying over and over until you get it right. I see your marriage becoming what the good Lord intended it to be. I visualize your kids smiling as they see you guys dancing in the kitchen because you feel so in love. I visualize those little fellows falling asleep at night knowing that Mom and dad will be “ok, no matter what.” Those images are the ones that keep me going when I experience journalistic blocks. It’s at these times I sit. I sit. I sit. I wait. I wait. I wait. I run my fingers through my hair. I go to the bathroom just to have something to do. Good magazines there. Sometimes I just sit, patiently waiting to be inspired...  or something.

Sometimes I rock in pain because my shoulders and arms are hurting from my most newly developed ailment, carpal tunnel. My hands tingle, shake and fall asleep. I get headaches. I sweat. I moan. But, I keep on writing. Why? Because I feel I should. I feel God has called me to say something, something to you. But occasionally I resent it. I curse it. I despise it. But you know what, how I feel has nothing to do with whether I should keep writing or not. I have to write. It’s not an option. This is what God has called me to do at this stage in my life. I am committed to the process no matter what I feel. No matter what I get out of it, I must keep tapping away.

I have years of experience, working with couples in the ditches and often thoughts, emotions swell up inside me that cannot be unleashed in any other way. I must express it. They are like the beads of sweat and pain that follows an arduous session of exercise. But you keep on exercising because of the process, but also because of the expected outcomes- pleasant or unpleasant.

I called my aging Father one night and asked him what he was doing? He said, “I am making myself read the Bible.” I asked, “Why in the world are you making yourself read the Bible? Shouldn’t that be something you want to do?”  With his usual dry sense of humor he chuckled and said, “Well, it’s been over 105 degree’s here for the last 17 straight days. If Hell is anything like this, I figured I better get to reading my Bible.”

Different things can motivate us. But, again, the main thing that must be remembered in marriage is the process. Writing can make you feel angry, purposeless, and even alone. No one can really help you write. You have to do it alone. You wrestle with the words in silence. You have to write when others are playing golf, surfing the Internet or watching TV. But, nonetheless, you keep writing.

The same thing is true of the finest marriages I know of. Recurrently the way I feel about my marriage, quite candidly- reeks. My feelings are dragging the bottom. At times I am reminded of what dad used to say, “Boy, your attitude is like Whale manure, it’s at the bottom of the ocean.” That was always my cue to adjust it.

 When couples are experiencing these low level thoughts in marriage, the feelings don’t feel good. We loathe in pain, because of pain. So do their spouses. I don’t like the fact that I cause Rhonda pain because of my attitude or actions. This was especially true when I was struggling with depression and anxiety earlier in our marriage.  I was so low that I didn’t know if I could pull out of it. Rhonda was just as low and wondered the same thing. But, we persevered together.  We kept heading “toward Mexico.”

The way we feel can get bloody and painful because the process called marriage is sometimes bloody and painful. But to get to the daises, you sometimes have to walk through the mud. To reach heaven, you often have to live in the abyss. Even Jesus went to Hades before he returned to heaven (Hades scripture- Acts 1?). He told Christians who were facing the persecution by Nero in A.D. 70 to “Be faithful until death and I will give you a crown of life.” (Revelation 2:10).  They were challenged to do the right thing no matter what they felt or what others did as they starred down death.

There have been times in both my marriage and journey as a parent that I really questioned God about why he was dragging me through the mud. But as I slowly crept back up from the pit to the rim, the question that always rang in my ears was, “Who are you to think that you should be granted preferential treatment?” I kept assuring myself over and over that “God can work well through anything, even a mess like this.”  Job taught me this powerful principle.

A troubled or struggling marriage is not like rotten fruit. Once it rots, it stays rotten. A bad marriage can and will change if you hang in there and make the proper adjustments. Same thing with mistakes you make as a parent. Stopping one behavior that catapults your spouse into space or drives your kid to join a gang, may open up new energy, prospects to move you in a more positive direction. It may also mean you have to start doing things that you have not been doing like telling the truth, be the parent not a buddy, stop nagging, or being too sensitive.

Just write. Just parent. Just be married. God can work through your stuff. He can make beauty out of dirt. He did once at creation, he can do it again.