Many
Christians bear the invisible stigmata, for after all suffering is a part of
Christian life; but that is only our share in the suffering of all humankind. The great difference is that the suffering of
the Christian can be redemptive. Our
sufferings come from many sources, not the least from ourselves. I grieve that I cause pain to others, and
thus to myself. That suffering from time
to time affects every area of our lives, even our marriages. Indeed in every marriage there will be the
pain of parting at the end.
Christian
lovers, who have considered within themselves the nature of Love, will have
known from the beginning that there is another side to the early delight. To them it is a place of purgation as well as
joy; it is in truth a little universe of place and time, of earth, of
purgatory, of heaven or hell. The
companion in this experience is to him or to her the instrument of fire which
shall burn away his corrupt part. . .
Love
is Holiness and Divine Indignation; the placidity of an ordinary married life
is the veil of a spiritual passage into profound things. Nor is this all; the lover knows himself also
to be the cross upon which the Beloved is to be stretched, and so she also of
her lover.[i]
Paul
advocates, “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave
himself up for her.”[ii] It is sometimes necessary to die to ourselves
even as Christ died to himself. That
dying is not academic, but personal and painful. There is suffering within marriage. It would be some sort of solace if we could
delude ourselves into thinking that we were not at least partially responsible
for the pain that we are experiencing.
Sometimes we are largely responsible, at other times we are not; but it
really doesn’t matter who is to blame.
The blame game has no place in our surrender to being stretched on the
cross of our beloved.
It is
natural to desire to avoid the pain; but it is necessary to tread the way of
acceptance rather than to kick against the goads. Sometimes the inner being throws up a froth
of anger, resentment, and self-pity, stemming from a sense of
helplessness. Giving vent to these
things only rubs the wounds raw. The
problem in part is our desire to control the outcome and reduce our pain, but
what if that is not possible? Then what
does one do? Make your surrender to God
in the real situation in which you find yourself. Live in the real, the now,
and forsake the past. You cannot yet
live in the future; do not borrow its imagined woes. Resist the temptation to
fix what is not yours to fix. Pray and
pray again. Use the tools of your
faith. Read Scripture, learn, and
inwardly digest. Turn your reading into
prayer. Listen, and be responsive. Fear not, but trust in the One who redeems
all things.
