About Sarah

I don’t have to tell you now that you can’t make it on your own.

But think back to the day you got married. The little groom and the little bride on the top of the cake stood all alone up there, and you both thought:

“It’s you and me against the world.”

“We can make it on our own.”

“Everything will be okay if I have you, only you.”

“We can do this: you and me.”

Add to that the innately American ideal of individuality, that we truly CAN be okay alone and make it on our own and we’re left with couples who have a hard time ever asking for help when they struggle.

We are fed a lie when we get married that says we can make it in isolation and that if we ask for help then it signifies an emergency. Not wanting to burden others or fearing what our families or pastors would thing if we admitted struggle, we suffer in silence. And in some circles, it’s still taboo to seek professional help for relationship trouble.

We suffer through pornography addictions, through sarcasm, through depression and through simply not getting along. We try to wade through it all by ourselves until we get to a place where it actually is a crisis and by then, in some cases, it seems like its too late.

In almost 16 years of marriage I’ve learned a few things. One of them is that we cannot and will not make it without a loving community of others who have agreed to walk with us through life. And I’ve also learned that we all need the occasional tune up in really good marriage and family counseling.

Community is absolutely necessary to a good marriage. Whether it’s a church small group that you attend, a collection of friends from college that all got married at the same time as you or even just a few couples that you feel comfortable sharing it all with, I believe that we can’t make our marriages work without community.

We NEED mentors. We NEED friends who believe in our relationships. We absolutely need others in our lives to help us walk through the hard things.

When Chad and I went through our marriage crisis eight years ago, we not only sought professional help, but we gathered a small group of both peers and mentors who knew almost all of the details of the crisis, who loved us and who were committed to seeing our marriage succeed.

Six months later we stood with them on a beach and recommitted our lives to each other and to the God who rescued us.

We needed them and we still need a community of friends who are committed to us.

So today, ask yourself: who are the mentors, the counselors, and the peers in marriage that walk your life with you and with whom there is a mutual understanding that both prayer and struggle will be shared. Ask yourself who those people are. If you don’t have someone or a group of others who support you in your relationship with your spouse, pray that God brings people into your life that will be life-breathing and helpers to you in your marriage.

 Who are your mentors? Do you have a community who is committed to the success of your marriage? How has community helped your marriage?

 

By Sarah Markley, Allume 2012 speaker who blogs about grace, second chances and relationships at sarahmarkley.com. She’s actively trying to live in a marriage that’s open to scrutiny by her community and who has not been afraid to seek counseling in times of struggle.

This is the last in Sarah’s Tuesday marriage series. To read her other posts on grace and honesty in marriage, click here and here. To read her suggestions on how to live a more intentional marriage, click here. Find her Facebook community here and find her on twitter here.

At least once or twice a week for the past 15 years my husband is late home from work.

In some ways, I don’t care. I stopped caring about his tardiness about a decade ago when I gave myself up to the fact that some people are early or on time and others are late. These two don’t seem to change much. He was a late person and I wasn’t going to ever be able to do anything to alter that.

But the communication? THAT I could help him change, right? Of course. We all can change and grow and get better, right?

Still, almost 16 years after visiting the altar together he still doesn’t call or text.

“You can call, or text, or email or even tweet me!” I tell him. “Please just let me know.”

After an angry argument the other night about the almost-two-decades long transgression, I walked up behind him as he stood in the kitchen and whispered an “I’m sorry” into his ear. “I should have more grace for you.”

“I’M sorry,” he turned around. “You deserve better than this.”

And there it was. Grace both ways. Grace for human failings, even the ones that might never be different.

Grace isn’t something we normally associate with daily marriage. We give grace to the guy who cuts us off on the highway or the girl who gets the McDonalds drive through order wrong {I wanted DIET Coke, not REGULAR!}. We give grace to our children when they’re exhausted and sometimes we even give ourselves a little grace to nibble on a chocolate bar in front of “Downton Abbey” in the evening. But grace for our husbands might be the hardest part of a grace-filled life to fulfill.

What IF he’s left his socks/pants/undershirt in a short tower in front of his dresser for the last decade {as if the rapture came and took all but his clothes}? What IF he’s still working on loving well and listening? What IF he slides into the hard sins that you never thought he’d slide back into?

Grace. Breathe grace.

And what IF I will forever keep the bathroom sink a clutter of makeup, hair products and long brown strands of hair? What IF I rush to irritation before I rush to forgive? What IF I still struggle with the big sins of my life: pride, bitterness and judgment?

Grace. For being human.

I am convinced that we see our spouses as what-should-be’s rather than what-are’s. We want perfection from imperfect people in imperfect relationships and we often fail to remember that ALL of us, including ourselves, are works in progress. And sometimes those WIPs don’t always move full steam ahead. Sometimes we slide back into bad habits or bad loving, and as bad as it is, it is a fact of life. Even a fact of Christian living.

I’m all about demanding respect and righteousness, about needing compassion and kindness, but so often we offer our husbands up on the altar of not-good-enough-yet for the sake of what we think they should be.

We need to remember that they, like us, are in fact living, breathing, failing humans.

Today, in our marriages, let’s practice breathing grace for our spouses. If we’ve failed, let’s get help. If we are struggling, let’s talk about it. If we’ve sinned, let’s stop and begin to do good. But in all things, let us give one another the wiggle room to be humans.

Do you have trouble remembering your spouse is “human”?

How do you “breathe grace” into your marriage?

 

By Sarah Markley, Allume 2012 speaker who blogs about grace, second chances and relationships at sarahmarkley.com. She’s actively trying to work to be more grace-lending in her own marriage and trying to let her husband actually be human. You can read Sarah’s marriage story here, follow her on twitter here and join her community here.

Join Sarah on Tuesday’s this month as she shares some of what she’s learned in the last sixteen years of marriage. Read her last post about honesty here.