Our Job: Focusing on the Positive in Our Spouse

Here is a quote by Elder Richard G. Scott from his last General Conference talk in April 2013, titled "For Peace at Home" that I think might be of help for our discussion.

He said, "...I offer some...thoughts for those who love a family member who is not making good choices. That can challenge our patience and endurance. We need to trust in the Lord and in His timing that a positive response to our prayers and rescue efforts can occur. We do all that we can to serve, to bless, and to submissively acknowledge God's will in all things. We exercise faith and remember that there are some things that must be left to the Lord. He invites us to set our burdens down at His feet. With faith we can know that this straying loved one is not abandoned but is in the watchcare of a loving Savior.

Recognize the good in others, not their stains. At times a stain needs appropriate attention to be cleansed, but always build on his or her virtues.

When you feel that there is only a thin thread of hope, it is really not a thread but a massive connecting link, like a life preserver to strengthen and lift you. It will provide comfort so you can cease to fear. Strive to live worthily and place your trust in the Lord.

We need not worry if we can't simultaneously do all of the things that the Lord has counseled us to do. He has spoken of a time and a season for all things. In response to our sincere prayers for guidance, He will direct us in what should be emphasized at each phase of our life. We can learn, grow, and become like Him one consistent step at a time.

I bear testimony that living an obedient life, firmly rooted in the gospel of Jesus Christ, provides the greatest assurance for peace and refuge in our homes. There will still be plenty of challenges or heartaches, but even in the midst of turmoil, we can enjoy inner peace and profound happiness. I testify that the Atonement of Jesus Christ is the source of that abundant peace, in the name of Jesus Christ, amen."

Defining True Love

A friend shared with me today a quote her marriage therapist had prominently on his wall:

True love is an 

acceptance of 

all that is,

all that has been,

all that will be,

and all that will not be.

What do you think? Agree or disagree?

Do You Think You've Been Robbed?

I got my annual chance yesterday to see my dear friend Lori. We talked much about how the Savior promised that in the world we would have tribulation. Yet all of us continually act shocked and wronged when things are hard or people let us down, despite thousands of years evidence that being human on earth will entail far more troubled than calm waters. 

She asked me to look up this quote and send it to her, and when I found it I realized I probably should read it every morning myself. 

President Gordon B. Hinckley:

Life is like that—ups and downs, a bump on the head, and a crack on the shins. It was ever thus. Hamlet went about crying, "To be or not to be," but that didn't solve any of his problems. There is something of a tendency among us to think that everything must be lovely and rosy and beautiful without realizing that even adversity has some sweet uses. One of my favorite newspaper columnists is Jenkin Lloyd Jones. In a recent article published in the News, he commented:

There seems to be a superstition among many thousands of our young who hold hands and smooch in the drive-ins that marriage is a cottage surrounded by perpetual hollyhocks, to which a perpetually young and handsome husband comes home to a perpetually young and ravishing wife. When the hollyhocks wither and boredom and bills appear, the divorce courts are jammed.

Anyone who imagines that bliss is normal is going to waste a lot of time running around shouting that he's been robbed. The fact is that most putts don't drop. Most beef is tough. Most children grow up to be just ordinary people. Most successful marriages require a high degree of mutual toleration. Most jobs are more often dull than otherwise. . . .

Life is like an old-time rail journey—delays, sidetracks, smoke, dust, cinders, and jolts, interspersed only occasionally by beautiful vistas and thrilling bursts of speed. The trick is to thank the Lord for letting you have the ride.

What Does Acceptance Mean?

Isn't 100% acceptance of a spouse or loved one who is in darkness, dealing with addictions, compulsions, personal weaknesses, or living in opposition to the commandments* a kind of hopelessness that they will never be who they could be?  

*In other words, everyone.

Tough question.  And if this person is a spouse and their weaknesses impact you, it makes acceptance of that person and their accompanying weaknesses that much harder. Here are my thoughts.

What is the alternative to accepting?  Not accepting?  How do you do that?  I see two ways: One way is denial or non-recognition. Consider a country who refuses to recognize another country because they don’t agree with its principles or territory lines.  The other country exists in reality, a group of people has gathered and made a claim.  Refusal to accept it means, “We will pretend you don’t exist because we don’t like your or your actions.”  In this case, non-acceptance is refusing to recognize something as a reality because you don’t like the terms on which it exists. 

The second kind of non-acceptance is rejection—“Waiter, I don’t like this food, take it back.”   

So, in terms of non-acceptance of another person as they are today, it is simply refusing to accept reality as it is because we don’t like how they’ve “drawn their borders” and want them changed.  Worse, it can mean closing our eyes or turning our back so we don’t have to acknowledge that reality at all, like a family that disowns a child. 

Do you see another, Christian way to not accept a person? What am I missing?

I do argue for 100% acceptance as a critical component of unconditional love: charity, the pure love of Christ, and still hold that only this safe haven creates an environment where positive change can be fostered if it is to happen at all.

So, if you choose 100% acceptance of a flawed person, what does that mean--what are you accepting?  Some thoughts:

First and foremost, we completely accept and embraceTHEIR DIVINE NATURE—WHO THEY REALLY ARE.  We’ve been told if we could see our spouse (or anyone) for who they really truly are and as they were in the pre-existence, we would fall down before them in awe.  My aunt was blessed with a pre-existence vision of her drug/sex-addicted roommate and could never again see her without being overcome with amazing love and awe. When the roomate would stagger in late, my aunt felt no fear or anxiety, just amazement and honor to know her.  Her natural response was a compulsion to just love her and treat her like the divine princess she was, she surrounded her with the light of Christ.

We accept OUR ROLE in their life.  Some things are simply not our job, but we think they are.  Our job is to seek to see them as they really are and then shine our love and of the love of Christ on them.  We be their friend, we listen, we mourn when they mourn, and share their burdens, even when self-inflicted.  Yes, we are to cry repentance to every creature, and so we follow the Spirit in every communication, and never speak from anger or fear. We are to be a nurse and a teacher, but cannot determine the diagnoses or assign the grade.  Unless we are their bishop, we allow God to remain the judge and reserve the deciding, defining and judging to Him.  With His help, we turn our worry and fears into prayers, and our pain and victimhood into forgiveness, patience, compassion and understanding.

We accept GOD’S ROLE in their life.  We give over to Him what is not our job at all, but His: He will lead them along their life’s curriculum as much as they will allow Him to.  He will fill us with love for them, show us who they really are, and help us know what to say and do that will help them on their path if we seek his guidance, he will help us bear the pains of their choices with patience, compassion and forgiveness.  Since only He can measure the sum of their spirit, intents, heart, actions, thoughts, beliefs, experiences, disabilities, injuries, we leave all judgment--of who they are, what they should be doing and how/when they should be doing it, to Him--both now, and in the day of judgment. 

We accept THE PLAN for them.  In this life we’ve been given time.  We accept that this very moment doesn’t define a person, but recognize that they are a person in process just like us.  During this time, we will all sin and struggle with weaknesses throughout our lives, we will succeed and fail.  Others’ sins and weaknesses will hurt us.  We, and those around us, will try to repent, we will sometimes backslide, we will sometimes rebel.  In the end, we will all succeed in two goals: to gain a body, and to gain experience.  But we won’t all succeed in becoming perfect through Christ before we die—the scriptures make that clear--this is a big risk we all took in coming here.  While we don’t fully understand how progression after this life works and so much seems to hang in the balance that makes this a scary prospect, our only hope is to trust the plan, trust the planner, and just keep filling our role.

We accept THE ATONEMENT is in play for them.  While we can observe other’s poor choices and we can feel their impact on us, we can’t see who they are clearly, but through glass darkly, as Paul said.  Again, the sum of their intents, heart, actions, thoughts, beliefs, experiences, disabilities, etc., are in the hands of the Lord, and when all things are made right I’m sure there will be many surprises.  The atonement is always working in the lives of others to various extents we cannot even understand, we can only love and accept this flawed child of God and see, love and accept them for who they really are. 

We accept the commandment of FORGIVENESS for them.  When wronged by another’s weaknesses, we accept that Christ already paid that debt, and any recompense can only be collected from Him.  We go to the Lord to resolve our pain and gain patience, we trust He will do His part with them, then we go back to our role of shining the light of unconditional love.

We accept THEIR AGENCY.  While we can’t ever fully understand why people do what they do and choose what they choose, we respect their agency and don’t use manipulation, compulsion, emotional withholding to compel change.  We encourage progress simply by seeing and treating them as they really are and reflecting that true self to them.

We accept Christ’s constant admonition to FEAR NOT for them.  In the world He promised we would have tribulation, but he told us we should fear not because he has overcome the world.  If we unconditionally love and follow the Spirit as we interact with other fallen humans in a fallen world, we can trust that if we do our job, He will do His, and therefore there is nothing to fear.  But, if another's positive change and repentance depends solely on us pushing them through it by withholding our acceptance, voicing disapproval or generally trying to pull out their mote for them—now that’s both the cause for fear and the result of fear. 

We accept HOPE IN CHRIST—we are not told to have hope in anything but Christ.  We simply can’t place our hope in other people.  That’s not to say we are hopeless for them, no, because we see them as they really are and know they already are amazing children of God walking a difficult path in a fallen world.  But we can hope in Christ--that the He is working with them in ways we can’t see, that only He fully understands the situation, and that if we follow His Spirit He will help us to help them in His way—by loving them, seeing who they really are, and acting in the Spirit. We hope in Christ's promise that no matter where our flawed loved one is on the path today, they can in an instant make it the starting point on the path to Him.

That is how I define acceptance.  We don't have to like what they do, we don't have to resign ourselves to the idea that this moment reflects who they are, but we do need to accept reality as it is and people for who they are. As I see it, anything less is prideful delusion.

This calls for some other future posts:

HOW DID CHRIST SHOW LOVE TO SINNERS?

WHAT DOES MY SPOUSE OWE ME?

YOUR SPOUSE IS NOT YOUR CHILD. 

Can't I Ask My Spouse For What I Need?

CAN'T I ASK MY SPOUSE FOR WHAT I NEED?

Yes, I can ask for what I would like to have from him, but he can choose whether to provide it, or whether he will make any attempt to try.  After that, it is entirely up to me what I choose to do with reality as it is.  

If a woman asks her man to stop drinking and he doesn't, she has to decide what she'll do, and she may decide she'd rather be with him drinking than not with him.  But, if she makes that decision, it's not fair to hold back and resent that he won't change or keep pestering him about it.  She made her request, he made his decision, she needs to make hers--is she in or out with the situation as it is right now--holding out for nothing.  

Once she decides to stay in, "in" means acceptance of all of it and choosing love, waiting for nothing—no caviats—otherwise she’s not really in at all in her heart, only in her body.  If there is any hope for him to stop drinking, the irony is it is more likely to happen in an environment where he feels completely loved and valued and sees how important he is to her.  

That kind of love from the wife often has the effect of growing his love too, so he wants to show her more love.  And even if it doesn't, with her effort alone, that love without exceptions is the only way a relationship can truly thrive--to love as God loves us.  

Now the wife can draw the line in the sand and say, “If he becomes violent when drinking, I will need to leave for my safety, but if that line is not crossed I will accept things as they are.  I can decide what my limits are, but if I'm in, I need to be all in, only that gives the relationship the best chance for being fulfilling to us both.”

We often say to ourselves in marriage--"If I'm not there to remind them they have a mote in their eye, what if they think it is okay to have that mote?"  But that's not our job, even and especially with our spouses—they are our companion, not our child.  Our job is simply to extricate our own beams, which too often represent our resistance to unconditional love.  When we remove that beam, we can see clearly to love them fully, mote and all, and then a miracle follows: either we finally see them for all they are aside from just a mote, and we get to love and enjoy the beauty that is that human being, or sometimes we even find that the removal of our own beam was one the thing that stood in the way of them removing their own mote. 

Is Accepting a Spouse's Faults Enabling?

IF I FULLY ACCEPT MY SPOUSE AS THEY ARE, ISN’T THAT ENABLING THEIR WEAKNESSES? 

Isn't that negligence?  Shouldn't I encourage them to improve?

After about 5 years of marriage, I learned for the first time a lesson that I learned and have had to relearn multiple times: people are much more likely to make positive change in their lives if they feel unconditionally loved and completely accepted as they are today.

This seems counter intuitive--how will things improve if I don't continue to make clear how I need them to improve? 

Five years into my marriage I came to a crossroads—life was not what I had expected.  The Lord led me to a new approach.  He helped me accept things as they were.  I accepted that my husband would continue to be inactive, depressed and generally unpleasant, and that my job was to only love him and be his friend, no strings attached.  I held out no hope for any change.  While initially this was sad, I worked to funnel my energy into simply loving him and being his friend in a way that he could feel.

While I had surrendered the idea of change and just loved him, to my surprise, change was the result. Within a short time he was active, exercising his priesthood, serving, and happier.  Naturally, our friendship and love grew. He still struggled with his demons and was depressed, but a dramatic, positive change came just from feeling loved and completely and honestly accepted as he was.  The accidental experiment had begun.

But being human—I forgot this lesson every few years.  I would get fearful and angry and start feeling entitled to some changes.  The result? His insecurity would grow and seem to stall any change and create resentments between us and the spirit of love slackened--we were again adversaries instead of a team of allies. I had to learn again that if positive change was ever to happen, which it may not, I had to let go of wanting it and just love. I had to trust that my acceptance and love would improve things even if change didn’t happen.

Unconditional love and acceptance is also a sign of my faith—my faith in the plan, in them.  It respects that they are on their path and the Lord is working with them in their time and His time.  And ironically, that acceptance it creates an environment that is much more conducive and safe for any change to actually happen.

It goes back to what Packer said about behavioral change being more likely to happen through study of the gospel than through study of behavioral change.  The Gospel of Christ is LOVE, and I've seen over and over again that practicing unconditional love has brought about more positive change in our relationship over the past 20 years than all of the gentle reminders, requests, pleadings, resentments, manipulations and demands to please change.

God loves us unconditionally.  He invites us, he hopes we listen, but he always loves us, helps us and shines the sun on us anyway.  In that unconditional way we can strive to be like God, we can shine our sun on our spouse no matter what they do.  However, we cannot be like Him in judgment or forgiveness, he has said He is the judge and He will forgive whom He will forgive, but we may not judge and must always forgive, whether or not they ask for it.

Only that makes a marriage a safety, a refuge, and a gift.  Life is already an exacting school, our spouse should be our comfort and companion during that school, not just another schoolmaster.

Some of the positive changes lasted, some didn’t.  So I start the experiment again--what if absolutely nothing changes, can I choose to fully accept today's reality with no wondering about the future?  What if I simply focus all my energy on providing this human, flawed, human being with all the love a child of God should have, no matter what he does or doesn't do?  That isn't hopelessness, that is trying to walk in the way of Christ--a heart focused entirely on love. 

And time after time this experiment has brought me greater peace, a better friend and a stronger companionship—and has provided the only fertile soil for any change if or when it does come.