We have a returning guest with us for this episode: Meg Wallace, mom of 7 from Texas. She’s also an author and has a foolproof potty training method that you need to check out!
She talked with us recently about the one thing she believes will destroy our homes.
Turns out, when we had that conversation, she referenced an earlier article that was essentially part one to that essay, and it focused on marriage. So she’s here with us today to revisit those thoughts—on the one thing that’s guaranteed to end a marriage.
In our last conversation with Meg, Renee mentioned a description of being hard-hearted, which will be helpful in today’s episode as well.
Hardness of heart is mentioned often in Scripture and, as the Evangelical Dictionary of Theology describes it, the basic idea of hardness of heart seems to be stubbornness and rebellion—a refusal to be sensitive, trusting, and responsive.
Although we might tend to think of Pharoah & the Israelites in Egypt, who famously had a hard heart and wouldn’t let the Israelite slaves leave Egypt, I think hardness of heart can inevitably be expressed toward both God and humans.
Welcome, Meg—all the way from Texas– and thank you for coming back for another chat. We so enjoyed our first conversation with you and thought this would be an obvious follow up.
Can you tell our listeners a bit about yourself?
Pastor’s wife of over 18 years and mother of seven miracle children; author of a book about “preventive training”
What was the motivation for writing this piece that we’re talking about today—that was published in foreverymom.com?
(It’s essentially about your parents’ divorce after 44 years of marriage & also another friend’s troubled marriage that was on rocky ground at around the same time.)
Can you walk us through those experiences/situations?
You say “Hardness of Heart is the Root of All Failed Marriages” and you have a list of the ways that might show up in a marriage. We’ll run thru this list & then park on a few:
Lacking genuine sorrow over sin
Continuing to go back again and again into temptation, lies, and deceit
Choosing to think of yourself as most important
Choosing what’s best for you and not the other
The small lies & huge lies you convince yourself are not a big deal
Being unteachable
Tearing down with words
Comparing/contrasting your wrongs against the other and judging that “theirs is worse”
Responding with defensiveness
The need to always be in control
Waiting for the other to say sorry first
Demanding the other change first
Thinking more of what you deserve instead of what you can give
Focusing more on being right than on becoming righteous
What you can get out of someone instead of how you can invest in them
Refusal to forgive
Refusal to humble yourself to ASK for forgiveness
Saying you forgive but never letting go
Asking for forgiveness & going back to the same thing again
Magnifying the weaknesses and minimizing strengths of the other while doing the opposite for yourself
Justifying wrongful actions because they “started it first”
Spending more time trying to find an official clinical diagnosis to explain away their issues than looking in the mirror to address your own
**Reading this list and thinking someone else should be reading this…
[truly abusive situations or mental illness are not what we’re talking about here.]
Lots of big & small ways we let it creep in.
One of the passages that came to mind when reading your article was the questions that the Pharisees had about divorce. Jesus’ answer was, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so” (Matt. 19:8).
Jesus said Moses allowed divorce “because of your hardness of heart” (Matt. 19:8).
Here’s an excerpt from the article that bring it home in a real way:
When I write that marriage takes work I’m not talking about the occasional act of service of helping clean the house, going to get the car washed, figuring out who takes the trash out or who cleans the toilets. I’m not talking about the effort or time it takes to figure out how to get consistent date nights, the challenges of figuring out how to raise kids together, working together to decide on what kind of house to buy, figuring out work schedules, when/where to vacation or even how often to visit the in-laws…
I’m talking about grueling, gut wrenching, goes-against-everything-you-feel work.
I’m talking about choosing to daily lay down your life for another, looking for ways to love, to pursue, and being relentless to leave no room for distance. This kind of work is staying in conversations that are extremely difficult, learning to have the self-control to know when to pause those conversations, and then exercising the diligence to pick it back up again. I’m talking about constantly thinking past what their mouth is saying to seek out what it is their heart is saying. I’m talking about loving when the other is unlovable, and respecting when the other is not respectable. This kind of work is being exhausted from the day’s events yet still making time to be present, to connect, to see, to listen, and to be a friend. It’s work to truly forgive and it’s beyond challenging to continue to walk in that forgiveness again and again refusing to hold onto past wrongs or hang them over their head.
It’s work to see your spouse as a gift and to be diligent to treat them like one…even when, or should I say, especially when, they don’t deserve it.
If you’re listening to this and you’re not at peace with your spouse, pause … begin with prayer. Ask God what it is you need to hear, where it is you need to grow and what you may need to change.
Marriage is for our good and His glory. You said it in a similar way in our previous conversation: motherhood is not to destroy us. Neither is marriage. Both are meant for our GOOD.
Eph 4:18 they are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to their hardness of heart.