yoonsense asked a question:

Is friendship supposed to be super hard? Or am I, are we, doing something wrong?

Hey dear friend — yes, friendship can be remarkably difficult. In fact, most of the time, it’s impossible. I guess you were hoping for good news, which there is, but it’s front-loaded by a whole bunch of bad news.

We’re each naturally going to be selfish. We’re all about self-preservation and protecting our egos. At the same time, we want company and community and we know that life is usually better together. In our friendships, we all tend to collide in those selfish areas, and our flaws and traumas and dysfunctions come spilling out in dramatic fashion. It’s unavoidable. You will eventually run up against someone else’s fault lines, just as you’ll have your own exposed too.

I used to think, “Well the good is worth the bad.” But that makes friendship sound transactional, as if I’m weighing how “good” it can be like an opportunistic salesman. Certainly there are some standards for friendship, and if it gets too toxic, we should consider walking away. Yet friendship is about accepting all the good we have yet to discover and all the bad we have yet to see. The deepest friend who exemplifies this, of course, is Jesus himself. He knows us as we are, yet loves us as we are.

Continue reading “The Downright Impossibility of Friendship” →

They say everyone gets a honeymoon period at the start of your marriage, but whoever brandished that idea: I want a refund.

Marriage is hard work right out of the gate. Our sentimental ideas about romance get tossed out very, very quickly — and I want you to be ready. Everyone told me what to expect, but no matter how much you prepare, it’s still a jump in the deep end. The more you know about what’s coming, the quicker you can stand on your two feet.

I know that marriage isn’t for everyone (contrary to our culture, singleness is not an illness), but whether you’re not in the dating scene or you’ve been married for years, here are three things I learned instantly in the first week of marriage. These lessons could be valuable and necessary for our entire journey.

1) Marriage pulls down the hologram and brings about the gritty reality of your spouse (and yourself too).

My wife and I dated for six years before we were married, and in those six years, I have never heard her pass gas once. I would constantly tell her that it was okay, but my wife was dead-set on maintaining an air of elegance. No pun intended.

About four days into the marriage, on a wonderful crisp morning in Florida, I asked my wife, “Are you boiling eggs?”

She said, “No. I’m not boiling eggs.”

“Are the sprinklers on outside?”

“No. The sprinklers are not on.”

“But then what’s that sm—”

And it hit me. Pun intended.

[By the way, I have my wife’s permission to share this story. I’m proud to say that she now regularly passes gas around me with the most exuberant freedom.]

In dating, we’re often on our best behavior. It’s like a job interview, where both sides show off their impressive benefits and credentials. In marriage, you see the rough, raw edges of the entire person. Marriage creates perhaps the closest proximity you will ever have with another human being. You’ll see every insecurity and neurotic tendency. There will be friction.

This is more than just about keeping up a pretty image.

It’s also a way of learning how to love an entire person and not just the parts that you like.

In Timothy Keller’s The Meaning of Marriage, he discusses how we each have fault lines in our hearts, like the cracks of a great bridge. These fault lines get exposed when we collide with another person, so that we spill anger or jealousy or anxiety. A married couple, because they’re so close in space, will inevitably drive a truck through each other’s hearts: which exposes all the fault lines. Deep-seated flaws will shake out of us like shaking a tree in the autumn. It’s in this exposure that we can choose to face our flaws, so that they would be re-shaped by the love we share. The sooner, the better.

You’ll also see every dream, hope, talent, passion, and ambition in your spouse. You’ll see what lights them up and gets them excited. This means that marriage is often about showing grace for your spouse’s worst and promoting their very best. Love sees a greatness in someone who cannot see it in themselves. And if marriage is one of the most intimate unions in the universe, then it has the power to encourage a person beyond their self-imposed limits. Though this can happen in many types of relationships, marriage offers a profound intensity to spiritual growth. Finally, we can pull down our holograms of who we pretend to be, and actually become the people we were meant to be.

Continue reading “3 Lessons I Learned Instantly In My First Week of Marriage (That I’ll Need For Life)” →

Anonymous asked a question:

How do you fix or work against codependency?

Hey dear friend, I wrestle with the very same thing, and I wish I had an easy answer for you. There are so many different reasons for codependency, and extracting ourselves is a messy process that requires a tough self-examination, sometimes daily. One of my reasons is that I constantly need approval to be certain of my self-worth. I’m hugely insecure for long stretches of time, so I tend to surround myself by people who are overly gushy or positive. When I hear criticism, it totally crushes me.

Other reasons might be that we affix value on ourselves by the number of relationships we have, or we need company to avoid facing our own inner-demons, or we need romantic love to fill the gap of love we never got as children.

There’s no easy fix, but here are two things to consider.

Continue reading “Breaking Codependency and Unhealthy Attachments” →