Relationships
Our marriage is coming apart and I am genuinely out of ideas. Where do I even start?
“And he said unto me, Son of man, can these bones live? And I answered, O Lord GOD, thou knowest.”
Ezekiel was a prophet among exiles who had lost everything they counted on, and God set him down in a valley of dry bones and asked whether they could live. His answer refuses both easy optimism and flat despair: Lord, you know. That is an honest place to pray from when you cannot tell whether what you are looking at is dead or waiting. In the vision, the bones did not stay bones.
“And straightway the father of the child cried out, and said with tears, Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.”
A father brings his son to Jesus after the disciples have already failed to help, and when Jesus speaks about believing, the man cries out that he believes and asks for help with his unbelief. Mark keeps the contradiction in rather than smoothing it. Jesus does not send him away to work up better faith first. Whatever faith you can currently muster is apparently enough to bring the situation to him with.
A path forward
Book a counsellor this week rather than eventually. If your spouse will not come, go alone, because one person changing how they show up genuinely alters the pattern.
Stop trying to fix everything at once and pick the single behaviour of your own that you know makes it worse. Work on that one thing for a month.
Pray for your spouse daily by name and specifically for a month. It does not guarantee an outcome, and it will change what you are able to see.
Closing verse
“Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope, through the power of the Holy Ghost.”
- Romans 15:13
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