You may know couples who are loveable, likable, normal people who can get along with everyone except each other. Obviously they know how to relate well with other people because they do so. But they will not apply the same effort to their own marriage. Through the years bitterness and resentment have grown until they no longer care or try to make their marriage work. They choose rather to live in conflict and in misery until they destroy each other emotionally.
What a tragedy! They are missing the best in life and replacing it with the worst. Finding themselves in a miserable marriage, they dig the hole deeper rather than make the effort necessary to climb out of it.
What does it take to climb out of bitterness?
1. The honest admission of failure. There can be no real progress until there is first of all a recognition of our own failures, blunders, mistakes, and sins. Until the prodigal son admitted “I perish with hunger” and “I have sinned” and “I am not worthy,” he never left the far country to go home an patch things up with his dad.
2. A humble cry for help. It is easier to get into any problem than to get out of it. We can slip into trouble gradually and so subtly that we often do not even realize that it is happening, much less how it happened. Once in it, we are unable to see our way out of it. We must admit that we need help. To know you have a problem is one thing. To know the answer to it is quite another.
3. We need power to implement the solution. A person can know he is in a hole, and he can know the way out, and still not be able to get out. It is one thing to be surrounded by darkness. It is another thing to see the light at the top. It is something else to be able to climb up. Sometimes we can’t climb out by ourselves. We must have someone reach down and lift us out. That’s where God comes in. He is in the business of lifting people out of holes.
There are even times when we recognize that we are in a hole by ourselves but it takes a counselor to show us the way out. Then it takes God to lift us out. Good sense, a good counselor, and the good Lord are an unbeatable combination for overcoming bitterness in marriage.
Most people wait until it’s too late to seek any help for their marriage. If your marriage is in the hole, you may not be able to get out by yourself. Don’t hesitate to seek help from a counselor and from God.