In marrying Julie I settled for less I didn’t exactly know it because she communicated and showed a person to me who was not who she really was. I told her exactly who I was and what I was looking for. She wanted to be that type of person but had not had the discipline or made the right choices to become that person. Deep down she believed our relationship would change her into that person like some magic potient. She hoped all the years of her poor choices and rebellious behavior would vanish.
She failed to realize marriage is hardwork, especially with the heavy baggage of promiscuity and adultery. I did understand all the dynamics or expect the outcome that occurred. As humans we expect the fruit someone else has grown thru the virtues of self-control, discipline, purity, etc even when we haven’t live such virtues. It never happens that way nor can it. The Father expects us to yield to Him and work out the grace, love, and cleansing He is willing to work in.
Julie tried to show things on the outside that weren’t on the inside. Her anger and bitterness kept her from looking on the inside. I think she was afraid of what she would find – her responsibility in what she had become. Her blaming of everyone else from men in general, to her brothers, to her father, her mother and finally of me, her husband was a smoke and mirrors means to keeping herself from truly looking in. She would do many nice things for me during our marriage, but I could tell in many of her subtle attitudes towards me that we were missing a connection. What she expected of me she did not expect of herself.
As our marriage went on I was the primary one to blame. She would only admit to having some issues as well, but I was the main problem. So, I would take responsibility for issues and problems that weren’t my responsibility. This always leads to frustration and destruction in the end. Julie didn’t see she wasn’t close to the person she portrayed herself to be – the person she wanted to be.
I settled for less by choosing Julie, because Julie had settled for less in how she live many years before I met her. Following Christ isn’t a magical formula where one becomes the ideal he/she thinks he/she should be. Surrendering one’s past to Christ is a humiliating and painful endeavor. It means a heart transplant of the ulitmate kind. Many times we want to come to Christ without the heart surgery so we do everything in our power to look presentable on the outside.
This always fails because our hearts end up failing in what Christ leads us thru. Just as a person who needs a physical heart transplant can’t climb Mount Everest, so a person who needs a spiritual heart transplant can’t climb the path God has for him or her. The heart of the matter is truly the matter of the heart.
I think about who Julie was before her rebellion in her early twenties. She had a beauty that she has long forgotten. As I look at the pictures of her late teens and early twenties I can see in her eyes show the life that was in her and her contenance revealed a priceless purity. She was a woman of virtue. A woman of truth. I saw glimpses of that young woman in Julie – glimpses that attracted me to her. I wish I would have met Julie before. I pray someday the glimpses I saw will reappear and grow to into a living reality for Julie and our children.
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