‘Be patient with me,’ he begged...

Sara and I have been married for a little over 5 months, so we are still very new to this oneness thing. And being new means there is bound to be anxiety, misunderstanding, and just general discomfort.

We are adjusting to a way of life that challenges everything we have known to be true because now we have to view life through someone else's eyes. And our worldviews are very different. This is a very good thing in the longrun, but I know now why they say the first years of marriage are the hardest.

Yet even in this season of adjustment, I believe God is speaking to us individually through our relationship's ups and downs.

The latest challenge I recieved from God came through an arguement we had. Sara confronted me about an attitudinal slump that I had been in. I admitted that I had been in a negative mood for a period of a couple months, but still didn't see an immediate solution to what had been putting me in that state. She offered to pray for me, but something in her prayer about asking God to give me "positive thoughts" set me off again, as I took this part of her prayer to be unsupportive of the tough time I was going through emotionally.

I felt like she was saying to me "You are being negative, and I know YOU know that you are being negative. I also know that YOU know that you are trying to change your mood, but that is not good enough. You must change it immediately, or I will not accept you." Of course, later I found out that she did not intend to communicate this me at all, but for the moment I was feeling like the FELLOW SERVANT in this parable of Jesus:

“Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him. Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt.

“The servant fell on his knees before him. ‘Be patient with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay back everything.’ The servant’s master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go.

“But when that servant went out, he found one of his FELLOW SERVANTS who owed him a hundred denarii. He grabbed him and began to choke him. ‘Pay back what you owe me!’ he demanded.

“His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.’

“But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. When the other servants saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed and went and told their master everything that had happened.

“Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’ In anger his master turned him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.

“This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart.” (Matt. 18:21-35)

I felt in my heart that she was demanding of me something that I already knew that I owed to her, a spirit of encouragement rather then negativity. I had told her that I wanted to give her this, but it might take some more time. So while I was talking to God about it and coming to this conclusion, I came to another conclusion.

I am just as much the first servant in this parable as the fellow servant.

For every time I felt like my repentence wasn't enough for my wife to accept me, there were five times that I couldn't accept her apology in favor of immediate change.

Talk about convinction. Bodyslammed on the pavement of conviction.

Here's how you know you are not being a good husband: when you do something to you wife that God would never do to you. I know God enough to see that He NEVER rubs my sin in my face. Any sign of repetence for my wrongdoings and He forgives me and accepts me with open arms. He runs to meet me instead of making me crawl back on my hands and knees in the mud of my iniquity.

But that is what I was requiring of my wife when she didn't do something that I expected.

God doesn't expect me to even know how to change myself, let alone do so all at once. So how could I expect my wife to immediately change the way she has lived all of her life at the blink of an eye. It's impossible and rather cruel.

Needless to say, an apology was in order. As I was explaining how I've been setting a poor example for problem solving in our marriage, I learned that she never even intended to communicate that she needed me to change immediately OR ELSE.

It's funny to me how God used that situation to skim off a major character flaw in my life: my unwillingness to be patient with other people in my life.

It was a hard lesson, but a good one that I will be revisiting on a regular basis. I can see how having this flaw remain in my life could absolutely ruin my future kids' hope. They will need me unfailing, unconditional love. They will need my patience. They will need forgiveness up to seventy times seven. And I want to be prepared to give them that.

Luckily, I do not have a Father that threatens me if I do not "clean up my act." He is the most astute oportunist around. Loving me into submission every time.

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