Owning Your Piece Of The Marriage Pie

Owning Your Piece of the Marriage Pie

For we are each responsible for our own conduct.

Galatians 6:5

In 1990 University of Colorado football coach Bill McCartney founded Promise Keepers, a ministry dedicated to building men of integrity. At the time, he truly believed that his marriage to Lyndi was just fine. But it wasn’t. In spite of his professional success and being the head of a major ministry, his marriage was not what it appeared. “It may sound unbelievable,” he writes in his book Sold Out, “but while Promise Keepers was spiritually inspiring to my core, my hard-charging approach to the ministry was distracting me from being in the truest sense, a promise keeper to my own family.”^a

How could this be? McCartney points to two events. One was a Promise Keepers rally where men were told to write down the number their wives would give their marriages if rating them on a scale of one to ten. He had to admit with embarrassment to the other men on the platform that Lyndi would probably only give their marriage a six.

Another eye-opener occurred in the fall of 1994 when McCartney heard a speaker make this pointed statement: “If you want to know about a man’s character, then look into the face of his wife. Whatever he has invested in or withheld from her will be reflected in her countenance.” Something clicked in McCartney. As he puts it, he escorted his “wounded wife” out of the parking lot determined to rebuild his marriage, even if it would require drastic measures. And it did. He announced his retirement from the University of Colorado in order to spend time with Lyndi. He gave up the ten years remaining on his $350,000-a-year contract. Sports Illustrated called it “un-American.” McCartney called it taking responsibility for the state of his marriage.

Of course, taking responsibility for your marriage doesn’t require anything as dramatic as quitting your job, but it can be just as scary.”^bIn the short run, it is far easier to avoid responsibility for our problems by blaming someone else. But admitting mistakes and owning up to our part of the problem is the single most powerful predictor of turning something bad into something good, “for we are each responsible for our own conduct.” Talk to God today about how taking responsibility may be just the change your marriage is looking for.

Our greatest fear is not that we will discover that we are inadequate, but that we will discover that we are powerful beyond measure.

—Nelson Mandela

^a 168

^b 169