Living

What does it mean to be "healed" and ready for a relationship? Any relationship?

I've been talking about this a lot lately with a dear friend, recently divorced, who has been told by Christian counselors that after a long-term marriage one should wait years before beginning a new, serious romantic relationship. To work, in the meantime, on becoming whole and healed before connecting with any new partner.

Having been through a divorce myself, I know such advice is common.

Well, a mutual friend of ours chimed in. She talked about how her father was very critical of her as a child. She'll never really heal from that, and she knows it. Early in her relationship with the man who has now been her husband for over 20 years, she said, "Please be sensitive in how you approach me when you are tempted to be critical. I need you to be extra sensitive."

And he is. In so doing, he isn't helping to heal her hurt as much as he is bearing it with her. In the process of serving her, he's growing, too, and she finds new ways to appreciate him. She gives him grace when he doesn't get it right, and in turn she helps to bear the hurts he carries with him.

We all carry brokenness in some form. What if she had waited to be healed of hers before marrying? She would have denied them both the experience of giving and receiving such grace.

Every one of us is damaged in some way because we are human and subject to the Fall. Sometimes it's the sin of another, sometimes it's our own. But it's there in each of us. The amazing part? First, that God can work in the midst of the brokenness. Second that he often does it through community, including the special intimacy of marriage, by first helping us to understand just how weak and inter-reliant — not how strong and independent — we are.

After all, God said to the Apostle Paul, "My grace is sufficient for you, because my power is made perfect in weakness"(2 Corinthians 12:9).

So it's a strange thing to me that in our Western Christian culture, we have a quest for autonomy, independence, strength and self-generated "wholeness,"whatever that means. In so many ways I've witnessed the self-help American spirit, which has so much to commend it in the secular sphere, dangerously alive and well in our Christian culture.

It's no surprise that polls routinely show a majority of American Christians believe the phrase "God helps those who help themselves" is in the Bible. It's not. In fact, it's contrary to the gospel of grace, though it sure fits with the gospel of American emotional individualism.

Anyway, I'm not suggesting reveling in being an emotional wreck. I'm speaking about simply recognizing that we aren't designed to be whole on our own, whether we are married or not. We are designed to carry each other's burdens and share each other's joys in community. All the healing time in the world, after divorce or any loss in any relationship, won't change that.

So, when it comes to new romance, particularly after divorce or the death of a spouse, it seems to me the threshold of health is simply being able to fully enjoy and be present in the new relationship and with the new person. Even so, a new partner may be called to help carry some of the grief or scars from the previous marriage's end. Of course that's the case, and so what? Handled constructively and wisely, giving and receiving such grace can be part of positively growing together in a new union, too.

Of course, this will play out in different ways for different people, including for my friend. But it seems to me that understanding we aren't designed to be "whole"outside of relationship, recognizing our own need and incompleteness, is a good starting place for anyone's emotional health.

BetsyHartistheauthorof"ItTakesaParent:HowtheCultureofPushoverParentingIsHurtingourKids—AndWhattodoAboutIt"(PutnamBooks).