To Love, Honor and Heal

From the movie The Goodbye Girl

Every Tuesday we’ll be posting an article about restoring and strengthening marriages that have been damaged by sexual sin. Hope it’s helpful.

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To Love, Honor and Heal

“On the other hand we ask of our beloved to correct all of the wrongs that these early parents or siblings inflicted on us. So that love contains in it a contradiction, the attempt to return to the past and the attempt to undo the past.” – from the film ‘Crimes and Misdemeanors’

Every so often the guys in Hollywood get it right. Even Woody Allen, a man I was a big fan of until he began a relationship with his adoptive step-daughter, can and does make some useful points. Years ago I read a glowing review by Chuck Colson of Allen’s 1989 film Crimes and Misdemeanors in which Colson said he showed it to non-Christian friends to start a discussion on ethics. My wife and I have come to share his admiration for the movie, enjoying it hugely and recognizing the vital points it raises, one if which is the role of marriage in the emotional development of both spouses. In the quote cited above, a psychoanalyst proposes that when we marry, we bring unfinished business into our union, business which we hope, consciously or not, our mate will help to resolve.

Makes sense theoretically. Practically, I’ve also seen it in my own marriage. I carted a boatload of shame and guilt into our partnership; Renee dragged humongous insecurities inflicted on her from a grueling rejection which happened years before I met her. We were attracted to each other’s obvious strong points from the beginning, sure, but with time we also realized we had each other’s historic wounds to deal with.

Let me put it more plainly. When I said “I do” in August of 1987, I was, at some level, also saying, “Please undo the mess others made of my heart before I ever presented it to you. I realize it’s a mess you didn’t create, but kindly mop it up nonetheless.” Truth be told, I think she was saying something similar to me.

I know that’s unfair, maybe even a bit neurotic. But strong love evokes high vulnerability, and where are we the most vulnerable, if not in the areas of the soul where we’ve experienced the deepest hurts? I shamed easily when I fell in love with my wife. Still do, though less often, less intensely. The slightest criticism or suggestion I wasn’t performing well in any area would throw me first into profound hurt, then rage at myself, and finally rage towards the person I felt I had let down because, yet again, I felt I wasn’t good enough, never would be, and thereby hated the person I thought I’d disappointed, because I had truly wanted to please them, had failed, and now they were yet another reminder of how essentially worthless I really was.

Like I said, neurotic.

This, naturally, exasperated poor Renee. She would simply make an observation or a request, which I’d take as an accusation, and off we’d go. How many times the poor woman would protest “I’m not your mother, your ex, your whatever. I’m not the enemy!” In Neil Simon’s comedy The Goodbye Girl a man who’s fallen for an oft-rejected woman makes a similar point when she keeps thinking he’s ready to walk at the slightest provocation:

“I hate those guys that walked out of here. I hate them. I’m the only one that’s coming back, and I’m getting all the blame!” via IMDB.

Then again, to love someone is to take on the joy of healing. After all, does anyone really think they can start a relationship with someone whose slate is completely clean? If we’ve lived ten minutes we’ve been hurt. Decades of living? Plenty of hurt, hurt that comes with the product no matter how attractively packaged. So to say “I love you” is to also say “I’ll walk with you and, to whatever extent I can ease some of your old pains, it’ll be my honor.”

That is, to my thinking, yet another way to follow Him. Because when He began His earthly ministry He announced, via His tactical reading of Isaiah in the Synagogue:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; He hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted —“ (Luke 4:18)

To heal the brokenhearted. Incredible joy; high privilege.

So I hope I’m a good provider to the woman I love. I hope she feels reasonably cared for, not too stressed out over the messes I make or the quirks I’m still working through. And now, reading the Lord’s words from Luke, I more than ever hope I will always be a source of relief from old pain; a new message challenging whatever negative, nonsensical lies she may have been told about herself. May I, like Him, be the voice of truth that says as He did in the Sermon on the Mount,

“You have heard it said. But I say unto you —“