My friend recently shared with me a bit of marriage advice she was given by her uncle…
“Marriage is like a tractor. When it is broken, you don’t go buy a new one. You fix the broken one.”
Or as Yoda would eloquently say, “If broken it is, fix it you should.” (My boys would be so proud that I quoted Star Wars.)
This isn’t really the mindset of our culture today. If it is broken, toss it aside. Go get something new. Marriages have fallen victim to this same way of thinking.
“‘We’re a throw-away society, aren’t we? We throw away everything. We never even try to fix things – we throw them away, we destroy things – appliances that break, old buildings because they’re old, we throw away relationships that aren’t exactly what we thought they’d be, we throw away wives, husbands, marriages.” – Paul Newman
The landfill of modern life is filled to overflowing with the marriages thrown away because they seemed too broken to fix.
What changed? Are marriages more broken now than they used to be? Or are we just not willing to put in the work to fix them?
My thoughts are that we don’t value them like we should. If they were valuable to us, like a tractor is to a farmer, they would be worth the effort to maintain, the time to invest and the work to fix.
You’re driving down the road of life in your marriage-mobile and all is running great. It is a well-oiled machine, lovingly cared for, meticulously maintained. All is good.
But, then you hit a bump in the road. You encounter some construction up ahead. You hit rush hour and the road of life becomes congested.
You start skipping some of the maintenance you know your marriage-mobile needs. The smooth oil of communication gets junked up with resentment and distance and misunderstanding. The spark plugs just ain’t puttin’ out no spark (if you know what I mean).
It starts as a small vibration somewhere under the gas pedal. Soon it grows to an annoying thumping sound from somewhere under the hood. You see the “check engine” light is now on, but who really pays attention to those nowadays anyway. You put a tune up on your to-do list and just keep cruising.
BANG! CLANK! CLUNK! The marriage-mobile lurches to a halt on the side of the road of life. You finally do what you’ve been dreading and lift the hood to examine the inner-workings of that marriage-mobile. It is a mess. It all looks too broken to possibly fix.
When your marriage-mobile was a well-oiled machine, you never took much notice to all the new models as you drove by the dealerships. Now they seem to be on every corner, tempting you that you could have something newer, better, easier.
Why stay and fix the broken marriage?
“God uses broken things. It takes broken soil to produce crop, broken clouds to give rain, broken grain to give bread, broken bread to give strength.” -Vance Havner
Who is your mechanic? Because there is One who can fix all that is broken, and He thinks your marriage is worth it. He can take your marriage from clunker to classic.
© 2012 – 2023, Danielle Peters. All rights reserved. Love it? Please share, pin, tweet or email but do not use my work without permission.
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