It's not you it's me
Drew Barrymore is back in the news this week. She is getting her third divorce…
I read a great article where she was being interviewed about a conversation she had with Jimmy Fallens wife, Nancy Junoven. Drew mentions, "I'd go to her about relationship advice and I’d be like, 'I just don’t understand why this keeps happening... I mean, this is exactly what happened last time. It’s just like every single time,'" Drew recently told Good Housekeeping. Junoven’s response to Drew was, 'I did notice that there’s a common denominator problem in all of your relationships and I’d like to identify it right now.' And I’m like, 'What!? I’ve been waiting! Show me the light!' She's like, 'It's you.'"
It is a funny thing, wherever I go, there I am. It is always so much easier to look at someone else and identify all of their flaws, than it is to look in the mirror. One thing is for sure, when a relationship fails, everyone plays a role.
Last year I heard and amazing sermon form Pastor Steven Furtick. It was entitled, “The Problem is the Pattern”. He talked about how we can go through our lives repeating the same patterns and praying for a new outcome. He shared how we can change these patterns however, he followed it up with a second message entitled, “This may take a while”. A pattern that you have repeated for forty years is not going to change overnight.
The first thing it will take to change the pattern is Courage. Courage to identify the pattern and to make a decision to change it. We all look at people who have a great relationship and we want what they have. The question is, are we willing to do what they did to get it?
Like Drew Berrymore, I am on my third marriage. This is never our dream for our lives. I could give you the short version of my marriages and tell you that husband number one found another women and that husband number two was verbally abusive and I could use these things to justify how two failed marriages could have happened to me. But what is my role? Do I just have a bad “picker”? Did I deserve to be treated this way? Is it true that all the good guys are taken? What I found is that I was leaving God out of equation. What I wanted was a spiritual leader that would treat me with love and respect but my actions were saying otherwise.
The Bible says for the husband to love his wife like Christ loved the church. God has laid out a road map for how to have a Godly marriage, the problem is “this may take a while.”
When I met Richard, my third husband, he told me he was no longer doing things his way, he is only dating Gods way. This includes Gods timing. I would have repeated the same thing I had done in the past, rush to being intimate, I would think the feelings were more than they were, I would think I knew them better than I did, and rush to the alter. Only to be surprised at how little I really knew about them.
This time was different. It was also difficult. Richard took the time to get to know me and for me to know him. He would ask me challenging questions that caused me to look at myself and my choices. We learned to communicate on a deeper level. The goal of each date was not to end up in bed, we actually learned how to really listen. There is something about really being heard that makes you feel valued.
God did not lay out and easy path, but it is one that leads to happiness not heartbreak. It takes commitment to stick with it while you are dating, but it builds perseverance you need for the marriage.
Without faith it is impossible. Only through God can you stay on the narrow path, but when you do God will take you places you never imagined.