A broken marriage is a difficult kind of broken to go through. In many ways, it can begin to feel like you're going to go through it forever. Maybe the raw emotions of it fade over time, you don't stay as desperately lost in the feelings of it all, but if you're like me, you can spend a lot of time reflecting on the why?
In the beginning, as I processed that why, I spent a lot of time pointing fingers. It's easier to deal with something so very broken, with such wide-ranging impacts, when you can believe at any level at all that the breaking had nothing to do with you. I don't know what changes that. Maybe for some people that way of looking at it doesn't change. But I've come to understand some of my parts in the breaking. Not all of them. But can one ever truly figure out the whole picture of something like a broken marriage? In pointing some of the fingers at me, I've come to own something significant about my marriage. And that is this. I went into my marriage believing that marriage would change me. I went in believing that marriage would bring a taste of joy to an otherwise miserable life. Trust me, I didn't consciously know that way back then. I could never have articulated it that way when I said, "I do." I could have never owned up to that. But I can now. I married a good person, so I thought that would make ME a good person. I married a responsible person, so I thought that would make ME a responsible person. I married someone fun, so I thought that would make life more fun for ME. I thought a lot of things, all of them centered on ways I figured marriage would make my life better. But here's the question that often gets overlooked at the beginning of marriages, it's a question that gets overlooked in a lot of life decisions really, and that is this: am I in this to make my life better or am I in this to make who I am better? I've come to believe that two people entering a marriage for the primary purpose of having a better life will more often than not achieve the opposite, but two people entering a marriage for the primary purpose of helping each other become better people will almost always achieve it. And also, assuming two are on the same page with that starting point is not a safe or healthy assumption to start with. I believe God created us to become who he imagines we can become and not for us to achieve and have all that we imagine we can have. Sometimes that creates great tension between us and God - between us and the people around us - when we're trying to change the world around us in ways that don't look like the one God is trying to transform within us. In many ways, marriage did accomplish all that I originally set out to accomplish. I am a better person. I am more responsible. I do have more fun these days. I have a long way to go in all of those areas, but I'm moving in the right direction. But obviously, that didn't happen because my marriage got better. It happened because I got better at realizing the real purpose in my life is a transformed me more than a transformed world. God is always trying to change the world we live in by transforming the people who live in it. We often try to work change in reverse - change our situations on the path to changing ourselves, which often leaves us feeling like we and the world are going in the wrong direction. If today your world feels that way, like it's going in the wrong direction, I encourage you, maybe turn some fingers around. Maybe ask, what needs to change in me on my way to living in a world that looks and feels like it's going more in my direction? The path to all things meaningful happens inside out. The world often feels like it's lost its meaning when we lose that inside-out direction. But don't lose heart, as Steven Furtick says, "sometimes when it isn't getting better, you are. It's indeed true, even if it can indeed be a hard lesson to learn.
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Robert "Keith" CartwrightI am a friend of God, a dad, a runner who never wins, but is always searching for beauty in the race. Archives
November 2024
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