One of my good friends and I had a running inside joke through out our college years. We said our 3 favorite things in life are sin, war and candy.
Now… no moral, sane person would choose those things in life as their favorites – so in order for you to continue reading this post I think it would be good to explain ourselves:
Sin – the title of the best album from the best Christian alt rock band in the whole world… Poor old Lue.
War – the title of U2’s breakthrough album in the 80’s.
Candy – OK, will admit this was the name of a girl we thought was cool in college.
That was 15 or so years ago. Time passed and both of us married and had a family (as did Candy, I assume). Obviously what was important back than isn’t nearly as important as it is today. And it wasn’t until recently that I even thought about our little, immature joke.
But my friend called me a few months ago and told me his wife was asking for a divorce. Over the coming weeks and months we talked about what happened that caused theirs to fail.
My unscientific guess is that only .005% of all marriages come straight out of fairy tales. Being married is hard work! Being married and having kids is even more difficult. Sometimes Happily Ever After would be better titled Happily Ever Day, or Hour or even Minute in the real world for real marriages with real people.
But after listening to him and looking at my own marriage, I realized our silly little “Sin, War and Candy” oftentimes applies to success and failure in our homes.
When two humans meet and fall in love, we fall in love as sinful human beings. Sin doesn’t stop at I Do just as it doesn’t end when you make a confession of faith or ask for forgiveness. We carry our baggage and ask our mates to share it with them. Worse yet, sometimes we conceal that sinful crap from our loved ones until it manifests itself through additional sin, lies, anger and unforgiveness. This often leads to War.
War doesn’t necessarily mean divorce – at least not at first. War is when we convince ourselves we are right, and they are wrong. It’s when we justify our actions and form alliances with other like minded people, so they can tell us that we are right. During war there is little hope that there won’t be collateral damage, but we convince ourselves that it is worth the battle because things will be better for everyone involved after the War is settled. But the single most important reason why War happens in a marriage is because – like real war – one or both sides decide they are finished trying to talk it out and Candy gets involved
The Candy is the sin we bring into the marriage now manifesting itself to destroy the marriage. It’s the lust, money, anger, emotions, time, work, friends, ambitions, dreams and so on. Everyone has Candy but the danger occurs in a marriage when couples refuse to talk about their Candy and decide that the other’s Candy is more detrimental to the marriage than their own. At that point, their own Candy oftentimes prevails.
“Oh, you want to spend more time at work or hanging with your friends (your Candy)? Well, I’m going to spend all your money or (my Candy)!”
Marriages usually fail when we start consuming our own Candy. Our hearts harden, we tighten our alliances and we dig in. At this point, The War is nearing it’s end with only the final battle (divorce) left to be determined.
I feel and pray for my friend, his wife and his family. My marriage has been in those rocky, uncertain places over the years so I am I no way basing this blog on their situation alone.
What I do know is this: We need to pray and support each other and our marriages and realize that Satan is on the loose and knows the best way to defeat us is to kill the family.
amstaticblog 