Pain Is Part Of The Package

Pain Is Part of the Package

Hatred stirs up quarrels, but love makes up for all offenses.

Proverbs 10:12

It hadn’t been a good morning. Just before breakfast they had blown up at each other.

“You are so self-centered and insensitive,” she told him.

“Well, you overreact to everything,” he retorted.

She wanted to take some time to talk about the situation. He couldn’t get out of there fast enough. Before they hopped in separate cars to drive to work, each got in a few final jabs on the fly.

The truth is that the argument had been building up over several weeks, maybe even longer. Linda thought about all the times Ron was preoccupied with his job, his friends, his hobbies, his favorite team—anything other than her. She began to wonder, Does he really love me anymore? If he really loved me, would he treat me this way?

Ron was irritable when he got to work that morning. What’s gotten into Linda? he wondered. She’s really turned into a nag—just like her mother!

That morning both Ron and Linda felt terribly alone. They both wondered if they were going to make it as a couple. With their hurts running so deep, marriage loomed over them like an endurance contest.

Have you ever felt that way? If not, you have certainly felt the stinging pain, if only briefly, of something your spouse said or did. With marriage comes pain. It’s part of the package. And whenever we are hurt, we usually see ourselves as innocent victims. Someone has done us an injustice, and now we’re left to pick up the pieces. While it’s true that we may be victims, we are not helpless victims: we can choose how we’ll respond. We can choose to be angry, self-righteous, and resentful; or we can choose to rise above the negativity, forgive whoever hurt us, and move on.

That’s what this proverb is all about: forgiveness. Unless we live in total denial, it’s the only way to cover over all wrongs. And it begins when we free ourselves from any vindictiveness and desire to hurt back. “Never pay back evil with more evil. . . . Never take revenge,” the Bible says (Romans 12:17, 19). When we realize that we have a choice about our response to pain, and we make the right choice, we will start to see love working on our behalf—and on behalf of our marriage as well.

Given the choice between the experience of pain and nothing, I would choose pain.

—William Faulkner