Testimony of Healing in Marriage: Being Held
Photo by Zoriana Stakhniv on Unsplash
Years ago, my wife Erin and I were part of a discussion about what holds marriages together especially during seasons of trial. The people who shared their story with us revealed how vulnerable, broken and yet hopeful they felt in the midst of the trial.
We discussed it the entire hour ride home. We talked generally, and then we got specific.
We wondered: what got us through our last trying season? What testimony would we offer others?
Year 13 of our marriage was both the most difficult and the most sacred. Our moments of pain brought newfound healing. Of course, we didn’t recognize healing at that moment. In fact, even all these years later I can’t tell you exactly how or when healing came. It just did.
The storm began when my family relocated so that I might explore a new vocational focus. For 12 years I served in full-time ministry in the local church. I loved it. It was challenging, and by some standards, I achieved some level of success. Then an opportunity came to take a role teaching and mentoring pastors in higher education. In addition to my new work, Erin also began working part-time outside the home for the first time in 10 years. She loved her new job. We bought a house; we sold a house. We moved communities. We started our new jobs. All seemed well.
But all was not well.
Within a few months I realized I no longer felt like myself. My identity was more defined by the pastoral role I occupied in the church than I had imagined. In the absence of that identity, I began to lose respect for myself. The most tangible way that surfaced was in my attitude at home. I was short with my kids and I emotionally smothered Erin. I teetered on the see-saw of entitlement and victimhood. Temptations, especially wrath and lust, surfaced and they had not previously been a part of my journey. I wondered who I was becoming.
At the same time, Erin was going through her own trial. Her connections at church were shallow. Her life and role at home was different and stressful. That particular parenting season was very challenging. My insecurity affected her as well. All that she was carrying felt too heavy; she was vulnerable to new temptations too.
Thankfully Erin is a truth-teller.
After receiving counsel from a good mutual friend of ours, Erin took a huge risk and told me of her struggles and temptations. She owned it all, placing no blame on me, she just named it for what it was. I’ll never forget the pain of hearing her say, “I am worried that I’ve lost respect for you.” It brings me to tears even to type it out. But it was also liberating. It was exactly how I felt about myself. My self-respect was so tied to my job, I had buried my true identity as a beloved child of God underneath my position, my preaching and my performance. I bought into a lie that I had warned so many others about. How could I ever expect the one I loved the most to respect me when I could not respect myself?
Erin will be the first to tell you that she knew it was her job to unpack her ideas about “respect”; where they came from, and why my role as a pastor mattered to her. And I had to face the source of my shame before I could be free. None of it was easy. But the truth is, we were held by God’s infinite mercy and grace during this season, and have been in every season. It is often only in hindsight that we can see the miracle. And that’s exactly what it was: a miracle.
Now, almost a decade later, we can testify to how God held us, and healed us.
Here are 5 intentional steps and practices we engaged that contributed to the healing of our marriage:
VULNERABILITY - Saying to one another, “I’m embarrassed to tell you that I’m struggling with ______ and it’s keeping me from loving you fully,” will never be easy, and yet redemption cannot happen without vulnerability. Let me warn you, dealing with stored up hurt, trauma, and baggage is very difficult. Your road to healing will be different than mine and Erin’s. I encourage you to seek godly-counsel. I owned my stuff. Erin owned her stuff. It was painful. It felt tense. There were many sleepless nights, and anxious days as we prepared for hard conversations. We were not perfect. To be blunt, it sucked, but it was also liberating.
CONFESSION - During this same time I began meeting with a weekly group to confess my sins and to hear a proclamation of forgiveness. I cannot overstate the importance of this group enough. It was one of the ways God held me during my marriage trial. Each week I confessed my sins, temptations and deliverances, secrets and anything I was not sure was a sin. After I shared, this group of guys pronounced freedom and forgiveness over me. Shame cannot live in the presence of love.These guys did, and still do model that for me. This group called me out of my entitlement and victim-mindset. Having this group also meant that I no longer needed to smother Erin with the weight of all my emotional needs. They helped me to discern what to share with Erin, and how I could best love her. About a year after our trial, Erin joined a similar weekly group.
OUTSIDE HELP - Very soon after our first difficult conversation I began meeting regularly with a spiritual director whose sole purpose was to listen to the spiritual wanderings of my life, offer insight, and ask probing questions to awaken me to God’s activity in the trial. Around the same time Erin committed to talking to a professional about the issues that surfaced within her. Her counselor was a safe, godly, competent person who provided practical, and spiritual assistance during a season where Erin needed a different voice in her life. If you are knee deep in muck, you gotta have someone outside the muck help pull you out.
PRAYER & SPIRITUAL RHYTHMS - We maintained spiritual disciplines. We kept our rhythm of practicing Sabbath as best we could. We met monthly with our clergy-couples small group. We each leaned into Jesus in prayer and through scripture. We formed new prayer rhythms together. While I know that these practices didn’t earn God’s healing or favor; I know that maintaining our spiritual rhythms kept us grounded in God’s grace in ways that I will never fully be able to understand, but for which I am deeply grateful.
LEANING INTO THE DISCOMFORT - If I’m proud of anything in that season it is this: once the wound was exposed, we didn’t shy away from it. Believing that new life was possible, we chose to do what was uncomfortable. We revealed our weaknesses and fears to one another. Hope isn’t found by wishing away the discomfort. It’s found by acting courageously, exposing the mess, and choosing to believe that God has the power to heal it. We hated what was uncovered, but we came to believe we would find a deeper love at the end of it.
None of this was pretty, and we both screwed-up many times, but facing our brokenness in the presence of those with whom we share sacrificial, covenantal love, brings us into the grace and mercy of God. If my wife knows everything about me and still chooses to love me, and forgive me then maybe– just maybe, the God who created me, and knit me together could love me too.
In this Love, we found ourselves healed...or at least healing.
And whole...or more whole.
And content...or more content.
And held.