Do You Suffer Well Together?
/MARIAH MAZA
An audio version of this blog post was featured on our podcast on 11/17/2020.
One of the best bits of marriage advice I received as an engaged woman came in the form of a question: “You both love each other very much, but do you suffer well together?”
PHOTOGRAPHY: ABBEY REZ PHOTOGRAPHY
In our first two years of marriage, my husband and I have been handed more crosses than I ever expected. And that’s coming from a woman who walked into marriage expecting my share of suffering--a fruit of my natural temperament. After all, I thought, if our vocation is a large part of what God uses to mold us into saints, part of that refining process will be painful.
But in that time, I have learned about a different kind of pain: that there is nothing more lonely in a marriage than not learning how to suffer well together. As you prepare for marriage with your beloved, do not be afraid to grapple with the question I was once asked.
After a man and woman truly become “one flesh” in the sacrament, they are connected physically, emotionally, and spiritually for the rest of their lives. This supernatural connection bonds you more intimately than any other human relationship on this side of heaven, and it encompasses every part of your new life together, including suffering.
Before marriage, and especially during engagement, many couples walk through difficult seasons. These don’t have to be trials to merely be endured. They can also become a source of redemption and practice for a lifetime of sharing everyday experiences. There is also profound comfort in the knowledge that, after your wedding day, God has reserved generous, specific, and boundless marital graces for you and your spouse to endure “for better or for worse.”
So how can you prepare during engagement to face the crosses of marriage together? An honest discussion is a great start. Take turns asking each other, “when you encounter suffering, how do you respond?”
Maybe your natural response is to talk about your problems, cry, and be held in the embrace of a loved one. Your fiance may say he prefers to distance himself when he’s upset. He would rather think about and process problems alone, and he’s not one to express his negative emotions. Neither of these tendencies are wrong, but in a marriage, different personality traits can clash unexpectedly.
Genuine love means striving to understand your spouse, even (especially) in areas where you are different. These are often the areas that will require the most sacrifice and selflessness. Learning how to allow your differences to complement each other, especially in painful moments, is an ongoing process that is refined over years of marriage. It is something my husband will continue to refine for the rest of our lives.
And yet, it is possible through the grace of confession and God’s mercy. You’ll learn how to better answer the next important question: “When crosses enter our marriage, how are we going to face them together?”
There is nothing like the feeling of facing a trial as a team, instead of letting it become a source of conflict, isolation, and loneliness. When husbands and wives suffer well together, they grow closer because of the pain, instead of being driven apart. They hold each other in silent but beautiful moments of shared grief, and are a source of comfort to the other.
I will never forget the day my husband and I received particularly bad news. It was the latest in a string of unfortunate events, some we had handled better than others. We sat together on the couch, and I asked, “what are we going to do?” We talked about our fears, honest and vulnerable, and then we held each other.
We were both afraid of the uncertainties to come, but I found a strength in his arms that almost felt like joy in the midst of grappling with something out of our control. In that moment we faced fear as a team, and I finally began to understand, just a little, what it meant to suffer together.
When my husband and I said our wedding vows, we stood in front of the altar and held a crucifix between us. In that moment, we were a visible symbol of how we were to carry our crosses “until death do us part:” together, with Christ as our binding strength. Apart from the cross, there is no grace to suffer well. United to the cross, our suffering, especially in marriage, becomes something redemptive, refining, and unifying.
In a true miracle of grace, God can bring spouses closer through their crosses, and in the process closer to him. Do not fear the trials that may come in marriage. If you face them together, with courage and prayer, your love for each other can only grow stronger.
About the Author: Mariah Maza is Spoken Bride’s Features Editor. She is the lead editor for the pro-life non-profit Voices for the Voiceless and one of the journalists behind the Voices Docuseries: West. Read more