People are the hardest part about life. Friendships. Marriage. Community. Church. People are messy and sinful and chaotic. I want to back up to a story about me and my husband. I married him when he didn’t follow Jesus. I didn’t really follow Jesus then either. We had a family pastor marry us and do counseling but a lot of it was show to make our parents happy. It was “what we were supposed to do”. We already lived together and had a kid together so it was more formality than necessity. We were already two that became one flesh. We already played the part. I had JUST started coming back to Jesus and was processing a lot of hurt and shame.

When I came back to Jesus, I knew I couldn’t force him to come with me. He worked EVERY weekend and had no interest in changing. A sweet lady had begun reading a book with me and helped me process who Jesus was in my life. She taught me how to talk to God and to be still and listen. I had been challenged to pray for him for 30 days and watch God work. Really following Jesus had brought me so much peace and joy and I wanted that for my kids and my husband.

Two days after I had accomplished my 30 days of praying for him, he came up to me and asked to find a church home. He saw there was something different and wanted to figure out what that was. I hadn’t had conversations in a long while about church, so I was obviously shocked. For one, my prayers actually worked. Also, my going first made him want to know what I had found. I got to watch my husband get baptized a while later and it was more joyful than my wedding.

I had stepped into a leadership role those many years ago and I never let it go. Fast forward to a year ago. My husband and I were on rough waters. We argued about lots of things. He was letting me down. I wasn’t communicating well. So much of our relationship was filled with tension. It was failed promise after failed promise. A sucky job situation that we couldn’t get out of (well, that he wouldn’t get out of). He was exhausted and checked out and costing us money. I had every right to be angry but also, I was not handling it the right way. I took the roll of mothering him and I remember crying in the office of my lead pastor in tears saying “I’m not sure we’re going to make it out of this one. I’m exhausted and I have nothing left..”. He looked at me a called me out in love. He challenged me to love him anyways. To pray over him and offer grace when I didn’t think I had any left. To let the ball drop. To praise him for even the smallest of things.

I picked up a book called “Power of a Praying Wife” and to my surprise, the entire first chapter was about me. It was about my job to pray about God changing MY heart. I’m sorry, what?! It was the longest chapter and it was about my need to change. SO I started praying for a softer heart. I started praying that God would move in me to be his support. I had to pray over my anger and my control issues. I had to let go of my expectations and choose love.

I firmly believe love really is a choice. It’s an action and it’s a choice. It’s choosing to show up when it’s hard. It’s choosing the person above circumstances. It’s choosing to work through the messy and hard together. It’s realizing that feelings change and even if I don’t like you right now, I will love you. So I chose to love.

As I started changing and pursuing God on my own, I watched my husband grow. I saw peace enter the chat. I saw gentleness return to our conversations. People invested in my husband but they also invested into me. I was challenged to memorize Philippians 4:4-9 and run my situations through it. It made it so much easier to remind myself that it can either be me and him again the problem or me against him and the problem and I’d rather have him by my side. It was easier to change my mindset to say “He is a good man, working hard for this family because he loves us.”. I saw him grow in confidence. He got a new job. He started working on being more present and intentional. He set up systems to remind him to do things. I praised. Hard. He started pouring and I felt more seen than I had in a long time. Our conversations became softer and more geared towards fixing the problem than being justified. We started saying “I’m sorry” even when we were still angry because I didn’t handle my response well.

See, love is laying yourself down. It’s servanthood. It’s sacrifice. It’s going first. It’s selfless. It’s so many other things too but when you realize you both have a part to play in the tension, it becomes easier to work towards a solution because you have a part to play. You have something to fix.

And I think it’s surrender. Saying “God, I don’t know what else to do but I know you can fix me, so help me see what I can do better. I want to know I’ve done everything in my power to be part of the solution”. Humans naturally want justice. We want to feel heard and understood. What we don’t realize is that it’s not about that. It’s okay to feel exhausted or frustrated or empty. Bring that to the father’s feet. Pray that your spouse understand and has a soft heart for growth and change. But YOU can’t change them. YOU can’t be their reason. God has to do that work and you can ask how to be a tool for Him.

I think this translates to everything. If you were to ask my dear friend what one of my most commonly used phrase was, it would probably be “It’s okay, I know your heart”. I really do like to see the best in people. MOST people don’t actually mean to cause you harm. I think when we remove “justice” from the situation, we realize they too are just trying to figure things out. They don’t MEAN to be hurtful. They felt wronged or heard a different story or had a different perception. Have you ever heard that hurt people hurt people? Well it’s true. When we feel hurt or under attack, we lash out in defense. We try to get people to understand why we did what we did. Or if we were wrong, we have a hard time just saying “I’m sorry”. We try to explain away the hurt. People are thrown back when you apologize for your side.

We should choose to go first. We should be the example. It’s not about me.

People are messy. We won’t ever find a single perfect person on this side of heaven. We are called to be an example of Christ’s love for others. I don’t know if you know this, but Jesus was betrayed and brutally beaten and murdered for our salvation. He did absolutely nothing wrong and He was persecuted. His friends betrayed Him. The people He saved, mocked Him and threw stones at Him. If anyone had a right to be angry or selfish, it would be Jesus. He has a perfect love. A love that took the ultimate sacrifice. His flesh died for our salvation. He took our sin and our punishment and suffered to give us a way to enter into a relationship with God. For our redemption. If that is the example, then we have some work to do while we are…

Under The Sun