Brian Castelli – With His Heart

During the recent political campaign season, we were deluged by uncounted political advertisements. If you are anything like me you found it hard to get facts and clarity about the candidates, especially about the presidential candidates. The talking heads on the news channels seemed to care more about who said the right thing to which group and whether they handled the debate well. The uproar of the campaign caused my internal defense mechanisms to kick in. I focused hard on just a few issues in an attempt to maintain my sanity. It mostly worked.

One down side to my focus, however, is that I totally missed an issue. When I saw the Obama’s standing together at the inauguration–Barak, Michelle, Malia and Sasha–it hit me: We have a role-model family in the White House.

It’s been since the 1960’s that we’ve had small children in the White House. At this time in our history when the nation is reeling from divorce, single parenthood, and children growing up in poverty, we have an intact family with small children to identify with.

I hope and pray that the family of the Obama presidency will be a source of inspiration to millions of Americans to get married, stay married, and raise well-loved, well-adjusted children.

In a previous post, I asserted:

The toughest thing about making a marriage last is that you need to work on yourself, not your spouse.

There are reasons why this is hard and reasons why this is the only thing that works. In this post, I’ll focus on why this is hard.

First of all, we just about always think we’re right. I never do something that I think is wrong. If I know it’s wrong, I won’t do it.

Second, no one wants to look bad. We go to great lengths to wear nice clothes, keep ourselves in shape, drive nice cars, to avoid handling questions we can’t answer, and so on. When we mess up, it’s a natural tendency to cover up.

Third, many of us think we can fix our spouses. We think we can see exactly what the problem is. If only he or she would listen! (Frankly, sometimes it is the other person. But attempting to fix the other person rarely works. I will explore this is greater detail in my next post.) It’s really hard to shift the focus back to working on ourselves when we can easily rip through a short list of the things our spouse has done wrong. It seems so unfair! The down side here is that all too often he or she could rip through a similar list about us!

Fourth, we can almost always find friends to back us up. Because many of them are also struggling in this area, they tend to close ranks with us. It’s a rare and precious thing to have a friend that doesn’t buy into our B.S., that challenges us to think critically about our situations. If you have a friend like this, thank God.

Fifth, the world is against us. The odds are against us even being willing to try to work on ourselves because the world in which we live seems to want to pull us apart. We are bombarded by messages about getting what we need, realizing our dreams, and eliminating from our lives anyone getting in the way.

For these reasons, and more, working on yourself is a very difficult endeavor. It takes great maturity, humility, and strength.

But it’s worth it.

What’s the toughest thing about making marriage last?

It has been the season of weddings around my house. It seems like every young person we know has gotten married this Fall. All of this marital activity has caused my wife and I to ask, “What does it take to stay together?”

There are many possible answers. My wife and I have been together for nearly 28 years. As you might have guessed, we have different ideas about what the single toughest thing is. Mine is this:

The toughest thing about making a marriage last is that you need to work on yourself, not your spouse.

It’s very simple, but it has profound implications.

I’ll be back with further comments on this in a subsequent post.