Can you relate?

She wants the dwarf Crepe Myrtle tree pruned. “Just cut the ends off to make it smaller.”

Well, I know that if you just knock the ends off all the branches then you’re going to encourage a million little flimsy branches to grow all over. 

I think you prune this by going back to the base of a branch and taking out the whole branch you don’t want. I spend 45 minutes stepping back and looking, cutting, stepping back again, over and over. It ends up dramatically thinned out, but it’s been “done right.”

She comes out when I’m finished.

“I hate it,” she says bluntly. “I only asked you to take off the ends before company comes.” Turns and walks back inside.

She’s pretty bugged by me.

I’ve spent 45 minutes in the sun, done it “right,” and she’s mad about it. Now I feel an emotional reaction inside, me, too.

Inside me: You can’t just chop off the ends. You don’t understand. Just because you want a certain thing doesn’t mean it can happen - it won’t look right with all the ends cut off. If you knew what I know you’d understand. I did what you want the way it had to be done.

Inside her: You didn’t listen to me. You wanted to do it your way. You didn’t care what I wanted. And now it doesn’t look like I want. We have friends coming over and I wanted it fixed and you’ve made it worse. I just wanted it better for now, not “right” by your definition. Do your "right" pruning in the Fall.

But - what was inside us didn’t really matter.

What mattered was what we were going to do with what was inside us.

• If what’s inside us comes out while you’re emotional, you’re fueling a fire.

• But if the words don’t come out, you can end up stewing and have a bitter attitude toward each other that erupts later.

• But then again - if the words DO come out to keep you from stewing, you can argue in a way that causes bitterness.

Crazytown, right?

This kind of scene has been repeated many times in our 50 years. 

And it still happens. That scene is recent. 

I say this because while the “inside me” and the “inside her” are true, so is something else: we love each other more than ever and our relationship has never been better. We’d both rate our marriage satisfaction 10 out of 10.

Our happiness isn’t measured by not having disagreements or arguments. 

It’s measured by how we disagree and argue. 

And how we disagree and argue is influenced by how we treat each other when we’re not disagreeing or arguing.

Don’t we all start kinda clueless?

We met about 3 weeks after Woodstock. No we didn’t go.

I was 18, she was 20. 

The exact day was 9/11/69. We acknowledged it with a card or date every year after that. Until 2001. From then on commemorating the day we met never seemed the same.

We dated a little more than 3 years. I broke up with her twice. Why? My brain wasn’t fully formed. 

We married in January 1973. We didn’t realize that from now on our anniversary dinner or trip would be during the coldest part of the year. Just one of many things we didn’t realize. 

How did you learn about love and marriage?

We learned how to be in love the way I suppose everyone does.

We had parents, family, friends, movies, TV shows, advertisements, and all the cultural signals that tell us what the “truth” is about love and marriage.

We didn’t take any classes, or read any books, or have any mentors. Nothing on purpose.

We didn’t know God or what the Bible said about anything. 

It was all just the instinct of offenses and justice and fairness and conscience. We each had our own version of each of those.

I didn’t know that when you get married, you’re marrying the whole other person, not just the parts you see and like.

Were you surprised you married things you didn’t see?

You marry all their past and their feelings and fears and faults and hopes that you don’t see. You get it all whether you see it or want it or not. 

And I didn’t know that what I thought about something that did or didn’t work in our relationship could actually turn into a mindset that I would follow without thinking from then on. For decades. 

I didn’t know that my words and actions could do great good or harm that could also last decades.

And I didn’t know I had a valuable eternal soul that was worth being loved and shaped by God using everything in my life. 

Then we all learn and have our milestones

I started drinking about the time we got married.

I drank at least 3 quarts of beer a day for the first 14 years of our marriage.

And I lied to her about how much I was drinking.

If she’d known how much I drank we would have had to have a talk, and addicts don’t want to talk about it.

When you get pickled every day, you don’t grow and mature, you don’t process life. You just react.

Most of my reactions to her were defensive and selfish. Those reactions became automated, like scripts, and ended up as mindsets I followed without thinking.

Do you think it’s easy to get into a rut? I do.

The same stuff would repeat over and over. That’s how mindsets work. That’s how we learn to be married.

Brenda had her issues, too, of course. We both contributed to some pretty spectacular dysfunction.

We’re still dysfunctional. Just not nearly as spectacularly. And the dysfunction does not get in the way of our satisfaction and happiness.

Hope presents itself in different ways.

She believed in Jesus a couple years after we were married.

I think it was about that time my drinking stopped getting worse. But it didn’t stop.

She and her friends started praying for me and telling me spiritual stuff. But it wasn’t for me.

Many years and arguments and disagreements later, a pretty big one happened. Big anger, big self-defense, big bitterness. In front of the kids too, like a lot of arguments.

It hurt.

And I was getting tired.

Shortly after that, I came home a little late from running errands.

I was late because I took some extra time to drink beer in the car so that she wouldn’t know how much I drank. That’s how I did it. Never bars. Couple cans in the car, buncha cans at home. Equals more than she knew.

Frequently she would ask “Why does it take you so long?” and I would lie.

This time I just said, “Brenda I’m an alcoholic.”

Crises can be good.

I don’t know why I told her that. I guess I was tired of lying. It can be hard work being an addict.

I thought she’d get mad. She should have. She always said she wouldn’t be married to an alcoholic.

All she said was, “Oh no, not you.”

That radical response left me unable to respond. I couldn’t get mad at her.

I couldn’t argue with her since she wouldn’t argue.

I was just left with me and my stupid beer.

I never had another one. I don’t know how that happened.

Two years later I believed in Jesus. I think I had to sober up to think and feel straight. I was 37.

But - I still had years and years of negative habits of responding to Brenda. Unhelpful mindsets and old scripts that I never wrote on purpose needed to be re-written. Slowly they have been.

It’s like we went down for twenty years, and then started going up.

I think things love to spiral up.

When you start going up it really does keep getting lighter and brighter.

As it got lighter I tried to pay attention and take notes. For you and for me.

I’ve ended up seeing how our attitude and words and actions and spiritual formation are all one big thing. A beautiful profound thing.

Three simple things we’ve learned. Just doing the first two a bit, and believing the third, have mattered mightily:

Just don’t make it worse -

I think at least half our troubles are because we take a small or medium irritation or offense and make it worse. A simple thing that can make a big difference is just don’t make it worse. Not making it worse is a big victory.

Small daily kindnesses or criticisms always add up -

It’s almost always the daily little things that nurture us or wreck us. The Bible tells us this, and John Gottman's (and others’) research has proven it. I want to major on the nurturing.

God is up to something good in my soul -

He’s shaping me into a certain kind of person that I don’t look like yet. And he’s using my marriage, and everything else, to do it. I have a say in how I experience what he’s up to. I can cooperate, fight it, or something in between.

So what happened after the “Crepe Myrtle Incident?”

After she blurted out “I hate it” and we both had our internal reactions?

In the past (and still once in a great while) we’ve had the flames and combat and bitterness all over the place.

This time, and usually now, nothing happened. Neither one of us said anything.

Later in the day she said “Sorry I got mad.”

That’s all that was said then.

I could have then said something about not doing what she wanted, but I don’t think she needed me to. You have to know your spouse to know if words are needed, and which ones.

Winning = a good relationship, peace, and avoiding bitterness. So we had a win!

But there’s always more . . .

Guess what? Later the same day, she also said: “I was afraid you were going to come in and yell at me” 😳

That hurt so much that now I almost wanted to argue about that. I wanted to say “When have I ever yelled at you for something like that?”

But, it doesn’t matter what I think about why she feels that way.

Doesn’t matter if it’s ever even happened.

If they feel that way, it counts to them.

How they feel is reality to them in this.

If it counts to her it needs to count to me.

If my goal is fairness and winning an argument, then I should go ahead and try to win, and get upset and defend myself.

Which would actually prove she’s right and confirm her fear. Right?

But if my goal is actually about our relationship, then I should respond in ways that are good for our relationship.

In this case I just said, “I hate that you had to think that and I don’t want to ever do anything to give you a reason to fear that.”

We all have choices.

There are lots of alternatives to getting defensive, having hurt feelings, or arguing over something being true or not.

Can I just somehow be caring and not make it worse?

And make sure any accusation doesn’t have any basis for truth in the future?

We all have a million crepe myrtle scenes. Is it worth a fight?

We’ve been down that road many times. How do you keep this from going in the ditch?

From long experience we’ve learned don’t throw fuel on a little fire, it’s not worth what can happen.

We’ve learned the urge to prove your point or defend yourself is powerful and deceiving. It never turns out how you want.

And we’ve learned we’re going to disagree, and it’s not a win to get the other person to “see the light.”

I’ve never got her to see the light in an argument in 50 years. Same with her getting me to.

How long should it take us to learn things like this?

Thankfully I don’t think there’s a “should.” And I think it’s mostly up to us how long it takes.

Today

lt’s simpler than I made it all these years.

Small words and actions - positive and negative - really do add up. We can take advantage of that and add more kind words in the calm times and let it add up well.

Simple true mindsets change how I think, and change what I say and do. We can choose our mindsets.

Trusting that my spouse is wired to respond to grace and kindness is a mindset. I believe it.

And God is up to something good in my soul and is shaping me into who I really do want to be. We can cooperate, oppose, ignore, or something in between.

To me, it starts in my soul and goes out to my thinking, which then turns into words and actions. It’s all one big good thing if I let it.

I wish I’d known this long long ago, but the journey and companionship and learned intimacy, with the Lord and Brenda, have been worth it.

I think it’s not supposed to be smooth or easy. It’s just supposed to be worth it. And it is.