Don't let the residue of the past pollute your future

​I recently heard Sarah Jakes Roberts asked, what are three mandatory questions to ask your partner before marriage?

I found two of her three questions really important:

She said to ask your future partner how they express their beliefs. She said two people can believe in God but the way they express that may be very different.

She also said she'd encourage asking a future partner what brings them joy. She said the world is heavy and hard and she'd want to know how she could best help bring joy to her partner's life in hard times.

I think those two questions are helpful. But it was a third question she suggested that I now believe is mandatory. When I heard this question, I had to wonder if it would have made a difference decades ago when I entered my eventual failed marriage.

It's a question I know I'll challenge my boys to ask of any future partner in their lives. And - I also think it's a helpful and maybe healing question to ask of any close relationship in your life.

She said one should ask, "what is the most traumatic experience in your life, and how does the residue of that experience show up in your present?"

Wow.

As someone who understands today how the residue of my past has stood in the way of me having meaningful relationships in my life, that was a mic drop kind of question. I was momentarily awed that someone could articulate and encourage that question so boldly.

Because the reality is, no one was going to challenge me to ask that question 25 years ago. I lived in a world largely burying traumas and denying residues. Both my close inner world and the broader world around me.

It's a question, when asked lovingly, doesn't discount or negate someone because of what they have faced, it simply wants to identify if we can navigate the residue of what you have faced together.

I found myself wondering this morning, what would I have said if asked that question before my marriage. And in all honesty, I probably would have said I'd never faced anything traumatic. At that point in life the only thing I knew how to do was hide from my experiences and deny their residues.

But, someone wise enough to ask that question would have known better than to accept that answer. Because we all have traumatic experiences and we all have residues. Anyone who answers that question with hiding and denial is going to problem solve the future problems of the relationship with hiding and denial.

Which, today, is a path I can relate to.

It's interesting. I think today I'd say that one question can accurately identify the depth of a relationship. Not just a future marriage, but any relationship one considers deeply meaningful.

Because if you ask that question of someone and they feel uncomfortable with it, or threatened by it, then your relationship probably isn't as deep and safe as you thought it was or long for it to be.

But when you ask it of someone and they consider that question a gift, as an invitation to be fully seen and known, and as an avenue to better navigating a way forward with something that feels important to navigate with, then you know you have something special.

I've come to know that life is always challenging, but what multiplies those challenges is often the residue we bring from our past challenges. Having someone who wants to understand those residues in your life not only soothes the past, but it also smooths the future.

I believe this with all my heart these days: the secret to navigating a future filled with contentment is discovering a way to navigate your past without distrust and hopelessness and resentment. Because those are often the unidentified residues of our past we try to drag along the journey to our future.

Too often we try to barge into a better future by getting better at ignoring our past.

That catches up with you. Better to have it catch up with you at the beginning of a relationship than having it be the destructive ending to it.

Maybe an ending that can be avoided by starting with better questions.