It was February, complete with the cold, gray overhang that makes spring seem a distant memory rather than a coming reality. The night before I’d had a huge financial argument with my husband—for the umpteenth time in 27 years of marriage—and I sullenly trudged through the sidewalk puddles much the way one sometimes plods through a long-term relationship.
I reminded myself that where I was and how I was feeling was not the same as where my marriage was going or where God ultimately wanted me (or us) to be.
I reminded myself that God had joined me to my husband, and no matter how I felt on a murky Wednesday, the odds that He had changed His mind about this union were low.
I reminded myself that the big picture I saw—which was full of aggravating spousal habits—was not necessarily the full picture God saw.
It is true my husband has flaws. It is also true that I can allow my husband’s weaknesses to take center stage, where they flash before me like migraine-producing strobe lights, such that it can be hard to see anything else. I begrudgingly admitted that part was about me, not him.
But how to get back to seeing things the way God sees them?
Prayer, of course. Okay, Lord, I said, sloshing across the flooded paths of Central Park to work, help me see the light in my spouse. Help me see the good in him that You see.
The good was there, of course, just as the trees and grass and the goodness of God’s creation still exist in the midst of a morose February day. The good was there, and my anger and frustration had blocked it out. My simple prayer did not make my husband’s flaws vanish, for they are as real as my own, very real weaknesses.
What the prayer did was place my spouse’s flaws alongside his positive qualities, so that I could see more than the negative. From there it was possible to pray for my husband in a new and more fruitful way.
