Journey to Surrender

Why hitting a wall may not always be a bad thing.

Have you ever "hit a wall" in your life? If you have, then you know what I mean by the term. If not, well, read on, because you probably will some day.

Hitting a wall: you know, when you are striving hard for something and suddenly, wham-o, progress toward your goal suddenly stops.

I recently hit a wall at work. I hit it hard, charging at full speed. I was so angry and disoriented that I took the rest of the week off work.

My wall leapt out at me from nowhere, but walls can also creep up on you. Progress slowly grinds to a halt, and it can take a while to realize what is happening.

Hitting a Wall in Your Marriage

We all have hopes, dreams, goals and aspirations for our marriages. Most of you are probably putting significant mental, physical and spiritual effort toward reaching them. More emotional closeness. A more passionate sex life. Being free of debt. Retiring early and traveling the globe together.

These are all good goals to pursue, but sometimes life and circumstances bring on those wall-crashing moments. Bang! And suddenly the goal seems unreachable.

What do you do when you hit a wall? Depending on your personality, your instinct might be to give up or to put your head down and fight even harder.

Let me give you three tips I recently learned from my own crash and burn.

1.  Rethink Your Instinct

My pastor shared some interesting insight with me in regard to my work situation. He said that sometimes the Lord will put wall in front of us to get us to go a direction other than where our natural path might be. In my job, I would normally have pushed back hard to see my agenda moved forward. But in this case, I felt an overwhelming sense that I was to ease off instead. There was an amazing sense of peace that came over me when I realized that my happiness didn't depend on my own plan being accepted and supported.

When you hit a wall, your emotions will tend to take over and drive to react instinctively. Let me encourage you to respond instead of react. When you react to hitting a wall, it is usually out of fear, insecurity or pain. Choosing to respond (and it is a choice) means you step back and challenge your instinctive reaction and give yourself time to size up the situation. You can then think it through based on your core values and prayerful consideration rather than raw emotion.

2.  Take Time to Reassess

When you pause to do an honest assessment of the situation, you might just find that your most natural course of action is not the best way forward. You may discover that the path you were charging so hard down before you hit the wall wasn't actually taking you where you want to go.

Brain science proves that our human brains are hardwired to look for the autopilot switch. Consider the wall an opportunity to do a fresh assessment. Maybe it is time to dream some new dreams or set some new goals. Maybe it is time to take a different path toward the goals that you want to continue to pursue.

(I shouldn't need to say this, but I will: obviously I am not suggesting that this reassessment include giving up on your marriage.)

Communication with your spouse in this season is critical. This is an opportunity to build intimacy by being vulnerable and transparent. Even if your spouse was the source of the wall, I still encourage you not to draw away, as your natural reaction might be. Instead, respond by reaching out, however meagerly to make some sort of connection.

I encourage you to pray a lot in the wall-recovery season. Search out the heart of God. Our Father is a good Father, and he has only good intentions toward us. Tap into and agree with what heaven says.

3.  Begin Anew

Read the amazing promises from the Lamentations 3 scripture graphic, and take them to heart. Take time to wait on the Lord and to prayerfully think everything through.

But also don't over-think it. Don't get stuck while you are trying to figure everything out. Every day is a new day and an opportunity for a fresh start. Regardless of how you feel, the Lord's compassion and love are unchanging, day in and day out.

Eventually it's time to take a deep breath and then press forward again. Step out in hope and in the confident expectation of God's goodness and love toward you.

When it comes to your marriage, don't just wait around for your spouse to change. Instead, work on yourself. Do the things you know to do. Delight yourself in doing good for the sake of your marriage and in blessing your spouse.

Be thankful. Nothing moves your heart forward after crashing into a wall like giving thanks. You don't have to be thankful for the wall (though you may find that you eventually are), but find the good in your marriage and spouse and begin to be thankful for them. And it really helps to say your thanks out loud, even to your spouse.

Hitting a wall can be brutal. But it also has the potential to bring with it life-changing, eye-opening fresh opportunities, dreams and direction.

Have you hit a wall and seen how God turned it into a blessing? Would you care to share your experience with my readers? Leave a comment.


Date Night!  - I'm running a new survey on my blog about date nights.  Please take a minute to confidentially share about your date night habits and wishes.

3 Keys to a marriage that sustains love 

I'm concluding my Faith, Hope & Love Series today with a post about love.

Sitting down to write this post I feel the difficulty of the task before me.

How do you write a single post about love in marriage that isn't a 10,000 word treatise, a theological expose' or a concise summary filled with trite sayings?

Impossible? Maybe. But here's my shot at it.

The Greatest is Love

Recall the scriptural basis for this series:

"Now faith, Hope and love abide, these three, but the greatest is love." 1 Corinthians 13:13

The whole chapter of 1 Corinthians 13 describes in great detail what love should look like. Most of us are well-acquainted with the words of the famous love chapter. Love is patient, kind and believes for the best. It is never jealous or rude or selfish.

I'm madly in love with my wife, yet I sometimes lose patience, say unkind things and behave selfishly. So to me, love is more than a set of good behaviors. It is possible to love deeply and yet fail miserably at showing it from time to time.

There must be more to love than "doing the right things."

Advice From A Prison Cell

I don't usually take marriage advice from people who have never been married. I make one notable exception, Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Bonhoeffer was a German Lutheran pastor, theologian, and staunch anti-Nazi dissident. The latter caused his imprisonment and eventual execution while he was engaged to his beloved Maria.

From prison, Bonhoeffer wrote to his niece, engaged to his best friend, on the event of their wedding, which he was unable to attend due to his imprisonment. Among other advice contained in his "Marriage Sermon from Prison," he wrote this:

It is not your love that sustains the marriage,
but from now on, the marriage that sustains your love.
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison

We have all heard the adage, "Love is more than a feeling." Here, Bonhoeffer takes that notion one step further. He is saying that we cannot count on the feelings of love to carry our marriage through. Feelings can be fickle and deceiving. But he adds to that the notion that love must be sustained, and what sustains love, according to Bonhoeffer, is your marriage.

It is marriage, that supernatural holy covenant union of two becoming one before God and man, that keeps love alive.

A Marriage That Sustains Love?

How do you ensure that your marriage sustains the love in your relationship? Sustaining love comes down to a daily choice - actually multiple choices - to serve and bless each other, even when you don't feel like it.

While there are dozens of ways to keep your love strong, here are three keys that will take you a long way toward lasting love.

1) See your marriage and your spouse as gifts from God.

Rather than look at your marriage as a problem (or set of problems) to be solved, focus and be thankful for the good parts. Even in the most difficult marriages, there are small gems that you can dig out if you look for them. Whatever you focus on will grow, so focus on the good stuff. It's not living in denial to be thankful for to good in your marriage and in your spouse. You can be thankful and still work on the  problems - the two are not mutually exclusive. In fact, a thankful attitude will actually do more to smooth out the troubled parts than will a bitter, resentful attitude.

2) Believe that you are one flesh, and live that way

Your marriage is not a competition, so don't look at it that way. Instead, remember that when you got married, you and your spouse actually became one. The notion of two becoming one is what the Apostle Paul describes as "a great mystery." Even if it doesn't feel like it, you two are one, so why not enjoy the benefits of being one with your spouse.

When you start to live in the reality of your oneness, score-keeping, battles for control and retribution make no sense. When you believe that you are one, self-focus gives way to other-focus and couple-focus. For more implications of what it means to enjoy the fruit of the one flesh reality you share, see "What If You and Your Spouse Really Are One?"

Are you afraid that being one means giving up your individuality? It doesn't mean that at all.  Read my "One Flesh: Unity and Individuality" post, and set your mind at ease.

3) Relentlessly Pursue Each Other Every Day

Never stop pursuing each other. Never. Jenni and I have just celebrated our 33rd wedding anniversary, but we both know that we still need to pursue each other. Every day.

The problem most people have with pursuit is that we tend to pursue our spouse in the way we want to be pursued. That rarely works out well, because men and women tend to define pursuit differently. In order to pursue well, you have to become a student of your spouse. It takes some effort and a bit of trial and error, but there is a huge payoff!  The payoff is a marriage that sustains love and passion.

Pursuing your spouse says to him or her, "I still choose you." It also says, "I am willing to do whatever it takes to have you and to keep you."

For more on pursuing your spouse, see my posts on relentless pursuit for husbands and for wives.

What would you add to these three keys that sustain love? What do you do to ensure that your marriage sustains the love in your relationship? Leave a comment.



Related Reading:

• From my "Dress for Success" series: Put On Love Part 1 and Part 2
• From Seth Adam Smith, writing in the Huffington Post: Real Love is a Choice