via TJC
I’m not on the trajectory I anticipated in my marriage. While contemplating what has transpired, it would be atrocious to complain, yet I do.
How quickly things changed in our intimacy, as I found myself taking things for granted. How foolish it is to believe sex and our relationship wouldn’t change.
The Lord has brought us through so much that I don’t have time to dive in. However, the gaps that have grown between us, especially sex, is something I failed to anticipate and mitigate. Instead, much like many aspects of my spiritual life, I find myself “winging it”.
No one ever wants events we can’t anticipate or control. I never anticipated the physical, psychological, and emotional changes that came as a byproduct of those events. If anyone thinks the only result of cancer that will rock one’s world is death, please understand there is so much more at stake, especially on the other side of survival.
Our goals and desires for our family may not have changed, but lack of unity will crush them, especially when the unity of sex slips away. The time I’ve given to so many things in the name of “attempted thriving” has me trying to do too much to make up for lost time and leaving myself exhausted and unable to find any margin for who and what matters most.
The simple things I should do are often forgotten and lost on me and this often results in a runaway train derailing. Even the “good things” feel like wasted time. The “tink…tink…tink” in the back of my brain is both the sound of the Holy Spirit trying to grab my attention and the sledgehammer pounding the proverbial wedge between us.
I know that a complete reorder and reprioritization need to occur and the resentment, bitterness, and anger of things past and uncontrolled must be surrendered to God. It’s the only way things will truly change as they should and for sex to return to what it once was and hopefully better.
Ecclesiastes 3:1 - To everything there is a season, A time for every purpose under heaven
Daily Battle Order:
Writing this made me reflect on the lyrics to David Bowe’s ‘Changes’, “Time may change me” (suggesting as time passes, people naturally change and evolve), “but I can’t trace time” (implying that it is impossible to fully understand or control the process of change).
You may be like me and need to give up your idea of what was and might have been. Surrender the resentment and bitterness. Focus on serving your wife instead of begrudgingly wishing many things about her/me/us hadn’t changed. She didn’t want those changes either! But I want her regardless!
Tip for the day - go out of your way today and show affection for your wife, write a short love note and put it under her coffee, bring home some flowers, be the change you want to see happen.
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