You?ve no doubt heard the old saying, ?An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.? And we all understand the truth behind it: while intervening in a crisis may fix a problem, it would be far better to prevent that problem in the first place. In other words, while sometimes intervention is necessary, prevention is a far, far better choice.
In the context of Jesus? teaching on divorce in the Biblical book of Mark, last Sunday?s sermon talked about how to apply this principle to the most important relationships of our lives. We considered, for instance, how we can build such a strong marriage that the ?D? word never even comes up.
Beyond the foundational issues we addressed there, here?s a summary of my thinking on what it takes to have a good marriage. It?s the result of almost 30 years of working with couples, reading extensively on the subject, and personal experience.
1. At least some genuine compassion and generosity of spirit towards one?s partner
2. A willingness to focus on what I need to change, rather than blaming my partner for whatever shortcoming there are in a marriage (and there are always things that could be better)
3. A willingness to actually make those changes
4. A willingness to do the hard, ongoing, life-long work it takes to make those changes stick (the tendency is always to revert back to our ?set-points?, or what comes most naturally to us)
5. A willingness to forgive
6. A constructive strategy for managing anger (which manifests itself in a great many ways, some of which may be quite passive rather than more active ways we usually think about anger)
7. A willingness to ask God for help (not all of you will agree with this one; I will only say that in my life, at least, the process of becoming who I want to be has not infrequently required the help of a? Power greater than my self)
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