Her meekness, my weakness

My wife hit me with this question: “Why don’t you do a blog talking about our marriage?” Inside of me, I was like, “Uhhhh, because I don’t know if it will come off right?” The scrutiny around blogs I’ve posted on concepts is one thing, but if I got that personal and I didn’t get a favorable response I don’t know how I would respond. Mostly likely I’d be tucking my heartstrings between my heart and running away. But I haven’t been known to shrink from a worthy challenge. If my friends were to challenge me to jump from a rock cliff into the murky water below, it’s on! So here I am jumping in due to the instigation of my wife who wanted me to write a piece on our marriage. 

You should know that we were married at the ripe young age of 20 years old (she was 19). We were only saplings. What can I say? I was impatient to start my career in marriage. We had children in the picture immediately. It might or might not surprise you to know we also needed emergency marriage counseling immediately. This was because of the things we were unable to reconcile without mature, experienced adults to help us hear each other. 

Today my wife and I have been happily married for years. That’s not to say we haven’t had tense moments, hard times, and strong disagreements that needed a couple of days to cool off from. But I can say it’s been happy because we are not living with a daunting belief that we might not belong together. Another contributor to our happy marriage is the knowledge that we are going to get to the other side of the hard stuff, and that we are going to get there with each other. There is no Plan B. That type of reassurance acts like a dropped anchor from a ship when the winds and waves are bringing choppy waters. I guess you can say we are now experienced sailors. Let me share with you one of the major things she had done to change how I responded early on in the tumultuous moments in our marriage.  

Arguments or "intense fellowship" are a normal part of marriage. Big argument items can stem from money, children, failed expectations, extended family, and poor communication. For us, the normal cycle of arguments would go like this: 

One of us would do something {ping}, the other would voice their displeasure {pong}. The other would respond with a sharp reply {ping} that would cause a reaction of one-upmanship from the other {pong}. The other would be like, “oh, no he or she didn’t,” {ping}. The escalation would include clapping hands to every syllable of what we wanted them to hear, a raised voice, loudly banging on tables, or a foot stomp or two {pong}. And eventually somebody’s parents would be blamed for how they were raised. Yup, that was our crazy cycle. Sound familiar to anybody? 

Then one day my wife did something that totally undid me. She ruined our normal cycle by responding in a way that I had never encountered before in the heat of an exchange of words. I can’t recall what I was frustrated by. Whatever it was, our normal yet crazy cycle started to spin. I just know that I was upset and made some comments that weren’t kind to my wife. There was a pause before she spoke. When she spoke, she was looking to gather more information and asking questions to get a better understanding of what I was getting at. But I thought, “she isn’t going to use her Jedi mind tricks on me.” I wasn’t having it. So, I tested if she was for real by maintaining my frustrated tone with her. You’d think that that would have unsettled her from what she was attempting to do. It didn’t. Soon we were just talking and discussing what was going on. I am pretty sure she apologized, and I apologized for the part I played in the misunderstanding. I was weakened by her approach. She was meek, and her meekness was my weakness. It’s hard not to feel entitled to strongly reacting to things that come across mean-spirited. 

I learned from my marriage that meekness has the strength to break cycles. It disarms our adversary. It quiets the yelling. It awakes our consciousness. It humanizes the exchange. It holds up a mirror to our ugly actions.

My marriage has had many good breakthrough moments that I can talk about, and if people are helped by this blog, I will attempt to share those other moments. I thought I should start by sharing one of the many areas that my lovely wife has impressed me in. If you know someone – or are that someone – who doesn’t want the arguments to continue to get out of hand, then try making the choice to be meek. You will be surprised at the power of what it can do for your relationships.