“Dear Brenda, I know you married for the first time when you were in your fifties, so I am writing to ask for advice. I’m dating a great guy, and we are talking about marriage now! We are both older, so I know that will bring a lot of unique adjustments into our home. What help or advice can you give me?”
Over the course of the last month, I have received four—yes, four—such e-mails, texts, or messages, and I have told each woman who wrote that I would get back to her once I had thought it through and had prayed about what to share from my experience—and hopefully in the form of God-focused wisdom.
Surprisingly, I struggled with this. I wanted to be profound…to say something quote-worthy that my friends could make into wall art and live by forever! I wanted to honor my own marriage while speaking the truth about personal struggles that both Joe and I have walked through over the last almost twenty-nine months.
Well, I’ve often shared that “John-Boy Walton” (a character from a widely acclaimed television show of the ’70s, The Waltons) gave me my best-ever writing advice: Your best writing comes when you write from your heart…when you write about things you have lived, seen, and felt. So today I will follow “John-Boy’s” advice and the prompting that what I have lived is what I must share. So I am sharing my reply in this format because multiple e-mails indicate that others probably have the same or similar questions—or they know someone who does.
Talk.
Seriously. That’s my number-one piece of advice. Talk. Talk often. Talk about everything—and I do mean everything. But talk.
Talk only to each other about the things that pertain to each other. Your mama, daddy, sibling, best friend, or trusted advisor can’t answer for (or even explain) your spouse. So talking to others instead of your spouse is futile. It even has the potential to be divisive. In fact, it is, I quite honestly believe, self-serving, because if you want the answer, you go to the source. If you want attention, pity, or someone on “your side,” you go elsewhere.
Love seeks to find the answer.
Some talks are hard. Some talks are sweet and will be treasured for years to come. Some talks are just plain fun. And some talks are just plain necessary.
Presuming that he thinks the way you do simply because you seem to agree on nearly everything is a bit naive. But you won’t know if he does or doesn’t feel the same way about political, religious, social, business, or family matters if you don’t talk about them.
No. You won’t know everything about your spouse before marriage. Some things you won’t learn until they present themselves after marriage.
But if you’ve talked all along—about everything—then talking through the “new” stuff will be your natural reaction and gut-instinct approach to resolving conflict or to facing new circumstances (whether good or bad).
“Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Your sight, O Lord, my strength and my Redeemer” (Psalm 19:14, NKJV).
Listen.
No, seriously. Listening is not a “given.” It’s a necessity, and therefore, this is a much-needed reminder.
You must listen. Talking is the easy part. Listening—truly listening—is the tricky part.
I considered telling you to remove your “filters” as you listen, but I realized that such a thing is nearly—if not entirely—impossible. Both members of the relationship bring pre-formulated filters into the relationship, and those filters can be both helpful and harmful, depending on how you use them. For example, one person’s filter can be positive; the other’s, negative. One filter may be in place so that what enters the ear must first pass through a spiritual filter; while the other person’s initial filter may be more socially based.
It is not that one filter is wrong and the other is right. Whether it is the dominant filter or one of many secondary filters, each will play a role during a conversation at one time or another.
The most helpful thing to do with these filters is merely to acknowledge that they exist and to truthfully identify for yourself which filter comes into play when you listen to your spouse. If your filter redirects everything to you—”What’s in it for me?” “How does that impact me?” “I’ll bet he really meant this _______!”—then your filter needs cleaning! The best way I have found to “clean my filter” is to line it up with the qualities listed in Philippians 4:8:
“Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things” (Philippians 4:8, NASB).
Don’t just listen to words. Use a grace-filled heart as you listen. Only then will you hear the heart behind the words.
Choose Long-Term Priorities
Over a cup of tea with Joe’s aunt this past year, I asked her (also a second wife) what advice she had for me. Without hesitation, she said, “Remember what really matters.”
She proceeded to remind me that whether Joe does things “my way” or not will most likely not matter in three months, let alone three years! She wisely pointed out the fact that my reactions were my choices; therefore, I should choose my words and actions based on what ought to be my top priorities: to love God and to love Joe. Period.
Only 1 Corinthians 13, the great “love chapter” in the Bible, could say it better:
“Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails…” (1 Corinthians 13:4–8, NASB).
As you looked at these three little tidbits of advice from my vast store of marital wisdom—Ha-ha! All 29 months of it!—you probably realized that these three principles were not just for “older” brides, “second” brides, or any bride in particular.
They apply to all of us—married or not!
Scripture doesn’t come with exception clauses! It says nothing about loving the other person wholeheartedly until the habits we’ve created over multiple years of being single get in the way. It says nothing about using uplifting words in our conversations until our feelings get hurt. It says nothing about different principles being in play for those who marry “earlier” in life rather than “later” in life.
So I leave you with a three-word summary of the relationship principle that Scripture teaches all of us: Be like Christ.
And to do that, you must know Him, learn about Him, and follow Him above all else…and above all others.
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