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Forgiveness in Marriage

Is lack of forgiveness a problem in many marriages?

Years ago a couple named Jack and Ruth asked to talk with me.  They were part of The Greatest Generation, having endured many hardships over their fifty years of marriage.  But they had  one thing that threatened to drive them apart.  Jack’s lack of forgiveness.

Jack married Ruth just before leaving for the war in Europe, but something happened between Jack’s departure and his safe arrival back home.  While he was overseas, friends had written to Jack, telling him they had seen Ruth at a dance with another man.  They had seen her kiss the other man.  Jack was wild with anger, but could do nothing about the situation until he arrived home.  When he did, Ruth admitted dancing with a friend of Jack’s, and, yes, she had also kissed him.  Once. But that was all.  Honest.  Ruth begged his forgiveness and Jack shrugged back a response, muttering, “The past is the past”.

Life went on, as did their marriage.  They had several children.  Then grandkids.  They celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary.  But something was missing.

Jack had never forgiven Ruth.  Through the years, whenever Ruth arrived home late, Jack was full of accusations and reminders of the past.  If any man ever paid Ruth too much attention, Jack accused her.  Although he had muttered, “The past is the past”, he continued to live with the past.  He doggedly refused to forgive Ruth’s decades old indiscretion.

I asked a friend of mine who serves as a divorce court judge what the most common problem was among couples seeking divorce. “Lack of forgiveness” was his quick reply. “I see it in nearly every couple. It doesn’t matter if the initial issue was big or small, by the time they get to court the issue has become monumental because one won’t forgive the other.”

How do we learn to forgive one another? It is both a skill and a process. According to the Prevention and Relationship Enhancement Program (PREP), there are several steps:

1. Forgiveness is giving up your perceived right to get even. It is canceling a debt. It is saying “I’m not going to hold this against you.”

2. Forgiveness is a conscious act of the will--a choice. I stop shouting “I can never forgive you for this!” and I start working through the sometimes long process of releasing my anger toward you.

3. Forgiveness is not forgetting. Forgetting is a sign of brain damage. We must choose to forgive not just once, but each time the offense comes back to our mind.

4. Forgiveness begins with an appropriate apology. Apologizing is a three step process: Acknowledge you’re wrong. Admit your regret. Ask for forgiveness. The apologizer looks the offended person in the eye, calls them by name, and says, “I was wrong. I’m sorry. Will you forgive me?” Don’t leave out any of the three steps.

To my knowledge, Jack never did forgive Ruth. They celebrated fifty years, but they couldn’t celebrate their marriage. Lack of forgiveness chokes the air out of relationships, but an accepted apology breathes life back in. Breathe some life back into your marriage.  Forgive.

By Jim Priest

Showing Grace in a Tight Spot

I was in a "tight spot" recently and recalled a lesson I learned from reading about Sir Earnest Shackleton and his 1914 Trans-Antarctic expedition. (Ok, I admit it.  I'm a history nerd!) 

The lesson was this:  when you are in a "tight place" (stressed, pressured, depleted or oppressed) you should display MORE common courtesy and grace to others than you normally would.  This is especially important when you're married and in a tight place and under stress.

That sounds like odd advice.  Difficult to imagine doing.  Usually, when we're stressed, our impulse and natural bent is to display LESS courtesy and grace.  We are MORE impatient with others.  MORE curt in our tone of voice.  LESS willing to be understanding and forgiving.  But Shackleton taught me to do just the opposite and it's advice that works in real life.

Earnest Shackleton and twenty seven men set sail from England in August 1914 just before the outbreak of World War I.  Their mission was to travel to the Antarctica and be the first to cross that continent.  But despite great planning and preparation Shackleton, his men and their ship, the Endurance, became locked in the frozen waters of the Antarctic Ocean and held captive by the ice for 20 months.  Ultimately the ice crushed and sank their ship and their story of survival on the frozen continent (not one man perished) is nothing short of miraculous.

Toward the end of their two year journey of survival in the icy Antarctic, Shackleton and two of his crew hiked the final grueling miles toward a whaling station that meant rescue for themselves and the men they had left behind at a safe camp.  As these three men crossed frozen miles of unyielding terrain, deep crevices and high mountains,  they were pushed to their limits both physically and mentally.  You might think, after months of hardship, they would be short-tempered and mean spirited toward each other, lacking patience and consideration for one another in the harsh environment.  Just the contrary.  These three men were under unbelievable stress but still exhibited a remarkable display of courtesy and grace toward one another.

Frank Worsley, one of Shackleton’s companions on the last leg of the survival sojourn, wrote this in his diary:  

“When men are as tired as we were, their nerves are on edge and it is necessary for each man to take pains not to irritate the others.  On this march we treated each other with a good deal more consideration than we should have done in normal circumstances.  Never is etiquette and good form observed more carefully than by experienced travelers when they find themselves in a tight place.”

Treating each other with more consideration?  Taking pains not to irritate each other?  Etiquette and good form in tight places?  Worsley’s observations, which seemed so self evident to him, are largely missing from our modern world and from our own marriages.

Think of the behavior most of us display toward our spouses during hectic times—like the end of the month when money is running out, or when problems crop up with the kids.. Instead of more consideration when we are in such a tight place we often show less.  Do we, like Shackleton’s men “take pains not to irritate each other”, or are we short on patience and insensitive to the feelings of our husband or wife?  Is “etiquette and good form” shown toward the one you love or is common coutesy thrown out the door as a needless nicety?

Shackleton and the men of the Endurance survived, in part, because they were hardy souls who were competent and courageous.  But a large part of their survival—both mental and physical, was because of the common courtesies displayed toward one another.

We may never be frozen on a ship in the Antarctic or have our backs to the wall in a dramatic expedition.  But, on a regular basis, we find in “tight places”.  It is then we must show courtesy and grace. When you find yourself in a tight place, remember the words of Frank Worsley.  Take pains not to irritate each other.  Treat your spouse with more—not less—respect than in normal circumstances.  Observe etiquette and good form even though your marriage is stressed out.  If you will do these things, you can survive your tight place even in the face of insurmountable odds.

By Jim Priest

Choosing to Cheat

Andy Stanley, Pastor of the mega member North Point Community Church in Atlanta Georgia, wants you to cheat. That doesn’t sound right, does it? But Stanley wrote a book awhile back entitled Choosing to Cheat, in which he advocates cheating to achieve balance in our marriage, our families and our lives.

Now I’m not an advocate of cheating. Any place. Any time. But after reading Stanley’s book I began to realize, I’ve been cheating for years. And so have you.

Stanley also recognizes this: “Everybody cheats. We have to. You have several important calls on your life. You have career potential to fulfill, a spouse to love, a family to raise, a ministry to perform. The list goes on. None of them should be neglected. However, when you consider the limited number of hours in a day, there’s no way you can reach your full potential in all of those areas. There’s just not enough time.’’

So we cheat. We pull a time that should be spent on one responsibility to spend time on another. We get home later than we should so we can put in the required effort on a work project. We promise our spouse we’ll “make it up to them later” when we have to cut short our vacation because of a crisis at work. But if a big enough crisis at home hits the family, we turn around and cheat at work. If our son has a substance abuse problem we take off from work to be with him. If our spouse walks out on us, we pull away from our jobs to attend intensive counseling sessions.

We cheat according to the crisis of the moment. Instead of being a slave to the current crisis, asks Stanley, why not choose to cheat by principle?

Most of us would say our marriage and family are the most important things in our lives. Even though our jobs demand a lot of our time, we say we intend for our spouse to have first place. But Stanley rightly says our husbands and wives can’t see our good intentions. They don’t want to mentally know you love them as much as they want to visibly see how you love them. When we give work a higher priority than our husband or wife, we cheat them. Guess what? They don’t like feeling cheated. Neither do we when it happens to us.

Stanley’s solution? Make a decision that you will “cheat” your work. He doesn’t mean stealing time from your employer, but he does mean shaving time off your work schedule, by agreement, in order to spend time with your spouse and family. Stanley gives us this concise list to follow:

• Make up your mind that you will spend priority time with your family
• Develop a plan that will allow you to do it.
• Deliver and discuss it diplomatically with your boss
• Be willing to walk if you can’t work something out
• Watch for God to work in your situation 

Now that’s the kind of cheating I can endorse. Why not begin by making up your mind to put your time where you say your priority is. Choose to cheat by principle. You and your spouse will be glad you got caught cheating.

Thought for the week: Don’t cheat on your most important investment: your marriage.

By Jim Priest