We Must Learn to use Life's Hurts for our Good

I have recently been going through some painful realization that my marriage is not as perfect as I thought it was.  This is not as I might once have thought because of my wife’s attitude or lack of gratitude for what she has.  It turns out there are some things that I have been comfortable with that are, even in my own opinion, unacceptable levels of complacency with my financial and spiritual status quo.  It’s just that everyone reaches a limit of their own ability to tolerate something they have observed for so long, and while the initial revelation to me of these areas of concern hurt deeply to my core, it awakened something in me that needed to be awakened.

 

Many people at this point would simply allow their egoic self to put up another wall and blame others for why things have taken such a turn.  So part of the difference for me is that I truly see my marriage as an eternal companionship with my best friend, and that she is telling me things that only a best friend can get away with.  But even more deeply, I have come to understand that I am far from rid of the ego, the natural man, which I understand scripturally to be an enemy to God and to my eternal progression.  Obviously it is also an enemy to my eternal marriage, though things had gotten comfortable for a while.

 

Holly and I both know that we are committed to love each other, not just to be in love, but that we have reached the edge of the plateau we have been on and the next move is a bit of a jump to the ladder dangling from the next higher level plateau.  Leaping is scary, and holds its own dangers, but sitting down and quitting holds far more peril to both of us and our eternal union than the knowledge that I tried with all my might and perhaps failed.  We both know we cannot yet say that we have done all we are capable of and so there is the need again to take a leap of faith and move forward in faith that what the road ahead holds is more adventure and new levels of joy for a marriage that has been comfortably if mildly growing in the right direction.

 

I know change is always painful, and yet I also believe that pain is weakness leaving the body.  As we seek to rid ourselves of the egoic dominance that holds us back in so many ways, it becomes more apparent that it is not so much about throwing off any bad habits but about developing new necessary ones, which will eventually edge out through atrophy those that no longer have any use for us.

 

I see this now as a welcome and important new phase of my existence and a demand to run a little faster while I am able.